BY 

H.  CraCHTON  MILLER 


THE  NEW  PSYCHOLOGY 
AND  THE  TEACHER 


BY 

H.  CRICHTON  MILLER 

M.A.,    M.D.,   EDITOR   "FUNCTIONAL    NERVE  DISEASES,"    HON.    DIRECTOR 
TAVISTOCK   CLINIC   FOR   FUNCTIONAL    NERVE   CASES 


NEW  YORK. 

THOMAS  SELTZER 
1922 


PREFACE 

volume  is  based  on  a  course  of  lec- 
tures  delivered  by  the  author  to  educa- 
tionalists under  the  auspices  of  the  Tavistock 
Clinic  for  Functional  Nerve  Cases.  The  in- 
terest aroused  by  the  lectures,  and  the  appreci- 
ation expressed,  seemed  to  warrant  their  ap- 
pearance in  the  present  form ;  but  a  few  words 
of  explanation  are  necessary. 

These  chapters  are  addressed  not  only  to 
those  who  are  professional  teachers,  but  to  the 
wider  public  of  those  whose  business  in  life 
calls  them  to  share  in  the  teaching  of  the 
young.  They  do  not  restrict  themselves  to 
modern  analytical  psychology,  but,  as  the 
reader  will  see,  they  cover  a  certain  amount 
of  the  older  psychology  that  in  the  author's 
opinion  merits  emphasis.  As  far  as  the  newer 
views  are  concerned,  it  will  be  seen  that  no 
attempt  is  made  either  to  present  the  views  of 
one  school  exclusively,  nor  yet  to  gloss  over 
the  differences  between  the  two  schools  of 
Vienna  and  Zurich.  The  existence  of  these 
differences  is  of  fundamental  importance  in 
two  directions.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not 
5 


Preface 

recognized  by  many  who  follow  the  literature 
of  psycho-analysis  how  completely  contrasted 
are  the  philosophies  implied  by  the  teaching 
of  the  two  schools.  The  "thorough-going 
determinism"  of  Freud  is  far  removed  from 
the  free  will  implicit  in  all  Jung's  work. 

In  the  second  place,  the  existence  of  these 
differences  is  the  very  obvious  justification  of 
a  detached  and  critical  attitude.  It  is  a  mat- 
ter for  regret,  though  not  for  surprise,  that 
this  justification  is  not  recognized  by  the 
founders  of  either  school,  and  that  they  follow 
the  example  of  most  pioneers  in  resisting  com- 
promise and  criticism  alike. 

Educationalists  are,  above  all,  people  en- 
titled to  exert  freedom  of  criticism;  for  their 
interest  is  focused  at  a  point  where  many  paths 
meet:  art  and  philosophy,  body  and  mind, 
memory  and  imagination,  science  and  religion 
— these  are  only  a  few  of  the  paths  that  con- 
verge in  their  sphere.  To  offer  to  education- 
alists a  panacea  or  a  master  key  is  to  write 
oneself  down  an  arrogant  fanatic!  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  these  pages,  in  spite  of  a  note 
of  dogmatism  that  the  reader  may  recognize, 
will  be  read  as  the  contribution  of  a  physician 
who  is  profoundly  convinced  that  his  sphere 
of  action  is  and  must  always  be  of  secondary 
importance.  To  the  writer  the  application 
6 


Preface 

of  psychological  methods  to  the  cure  of 
nervous  disorders  is  to  their  application  in 
education  as  the  cure  of  consumption  is  to  its 
prevention.  But  consumption  can  only  be 
prevented  through  the  efforts  of  those  who 
understand  at  least  something  of  the  laws  in- 
volved in  its  treatment.  It  is  not  necessary 
that  they  should  have  been  patients  in  a  sana- 
torium. At  the  same  time,  three  facts  emerge 
from  the  analogy  which  are  worth  considera- 
tion. First,  the  pathologists  tell  us  that  nearly 
every  town  dweller,  however  healthy  he  may 
appear  to  be,  harbours  the  tubercle  bacillus. 
Similarly  every  educationalist,  be  he  never 
so  well-adjusted,  harbours  repressions  that  are 
potentially  harmful.  Secondly,  every  one  en- 
gaged in  the  prevention  of  phthisis  would 
profit  from,  or  does  profit  from,  those  hygienic 
measures  that  constitute  his  propaganda.  In 
like  manner,  there  is  not  a  school-teacher,  nor 
yet  a  parent,  who  would  not  profit  in  his  or 
her  mental  life  from  those  principles  of  men- 
tal hygiene  which  this  volume  is  meant  to  out- 
line. Finally,  the  work  of  preventing  tuber- 
culosis is  too  vast  and  too  pressing  to  be  rele- 
gated exclusively  to  those  who  have  had  the 
experience  of  tubercular  disease  and  sana- 
torium treatment.  In  the  same  way  the  appli- 
cation of  analytical  psychology  to  the  needs 
7 


Preface 

of  the  young  is  too  urgent  and  too  extensive 
to  be  committed  to  the  few,  who  by  reason  of 
a  nervous  breakdown  or  otherwise  have  had 
the  privilege  of  sane  analytical  treatment. 

Those  who  share  the  writer's  conviction, 
that  it  is  for  the  new  generation  that  the 
new  teaching  is  most  important,  will  also 
share  his  impatience  with  the  obstructionists. 
Analytical  views  have  spread  so  rapidly  in 
the  last  eighteen  years  that  the  reactionaries 
will  soon  be  negligible.  But,  as  happens  in 
every  new  movement  with  unfailing  certainty, 
the  more  serious  obstruction  comes  from 
within.  It  comes  from  the  jealousy  of  the 
pioneers  and  their  immediate  followers,  who, 
with  the  conscious  motive  of  safeguarding  the 
movement,  proclaim  loudly  and  indignantly 
that  no  one  can  heal  who  has  not  himself  been 
healed,  that  no  one  can  initiate  who  has  not 
himself  been  initiated,  and  that  no  one  can 
preach  who  has  not  been  ordained.  The  un- 
conscious motive  of  the  caste  seems  to  elude 
the  analyst's  self-scrutiny,  and  he  offers  a 
sorry  advertisement  of  his  own  vaunted  ad- 
justment and  freedom  from  complexes  when 
in  slightly  altered  phraseology  he  protests: 
"Master,  we  saw  one  casting  out  devils  in 
Thy  name,  and  we  forbade  him,  because  he 
followeth  not  us."  If  we  are  anywise  fit  to 
8 


Preface 

be  teachers  of  the  young,  we  shall  recognize 
that  no  knowledge,  creed,  shibboleth,  nor 
initiation  can  qualify  us  for  our  task,  but 
primarily  that  vision  which  allows  us  to  per- 
ceive the  child's  needs,  his  difficulties,  and 
his  possibilities.  In  the  hope  that  these  chap- 
ters may  contribute  at  least  in  a  small  measure 
to  that  clearer  vision,  they  are  offered  to 
teachers  who  are  yet  content  to  be  learners. 
I  take  this  opportunity  of  expressing  my 
thanks  to  Miss  L.  V.  Southwell,  M.A.,  who 
has  fulfilled  the  function,  not  only  of  an 
efficient  and  untiring  secretary,  but  also  of  a 
most  clear-sighted  collaborator.  To  my  wife 
I  owe  the  debt  which  every  writer  owes  to  a 
critic  who  is  both  candid  and  constructive. 

H.  C.  M. 

HARLEY  STREET, 
LONDON,  W. 


NOTE 

'  I  VHE  substance  of  this  book  was  contained  in  a 
A  course  of  lectures  to  teachers  and  others,  given 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Tavistock  Clinic  for  Functional 
Nerve  Cases,  during  the  Spring  Term,  1921.  Some 
fresh  material  has  been  added. 

It  is  proposed  to  issue  shortly  two  similar  volumes 
entitled,  The  New  Psychology  and  the  Parent  and  The 
Psychology  and  the  Preacher.  These  books  are  intended 
for  different  groups  of  readers,  and  they  will  be  similar 
as  regards  some  of  the  subject  matter.  They  will  differ 
in  presentation  and  in  the  subject  matter  of  the  remainder. 
The  additional  matter  in  The  New  Psychology  and  the 
Preacher  will  be  based  upon  a  series  of  lectures  delivered 
at  Mirfield  and  at  Westminster  College,  Cambridge. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I  INTRODUCTORY 13 

II  AUTHORITY  AND  SUGGESTIBILITY       .        .  23 

III  REALITY  AND  PHANTASY          ...  47 

IV  EMOTIONAL  DEVELOPMENT:  THE  BOY       .  73 
V  EMOTIONAL  DEVELOPMENT:  THE  GIRL      .  95 

VI  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  MOTIVE      .        .        .121 

VII  MENTAL  MECHANISMS      ....     145 

VIII  DREAM  SYMBOLISM           .        .        .        .     169 

IX  THE  HERD  INSTINCT  AND  THE  HERD  IDEAL     195 

X  EDUCATIONAL  METHODS           .        .        .213 


II 


CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTORY 


THE  NEW  PSYCHOLOGY  AND  PSYCHO-ANALYSIS. 

IN  WHAT  SENSE  Is  IT  "NEW?" 

Not  in  the  sense  of  conflicting  with  all  pre* 
existing  theories. 

THE    CONTRIBUTION    OF    CLINICAL    PSYCHOLOGY   TO 
EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS. 

WHAT  HAS  THE  NEW  PSYCHOLOGY  TO  OFFER  THE 
TEACHER? 

Not  a  magical  solution. 

Analysis  not  applicable  to  the  normal  child. 

Analysis  and  self-knowledge. 

TEST  OF  ITS  VALUE: 

Power  to  give  the  child  spiritual  freedom. 
Power  to  help  the  child  in  three  ways. 

PURPOSE  AND  LIMITATIONS  OF  THE  BOOK. 


INTRODUCTORY 

title  of  this  book  needs  a  brief  expla- 
nation.  To  some  people  it  will  suggest 
a  disingenuous  evasion  of  the  word  "psycho- 
analysis." The  term  has  been  avoided  out  of 
respect  for  the  limits  to  its  application  laid 
down  by  the  Freudian  School,  who  hold  that 
"The  Freudian  theory  and  technique,  and 
these  alone,  constitute  psycho-analysis." 1 
While  recognizing  the  infinite  debt  which 
psychologists  owe  to  the  pioneer  work  of 
Freud,  in  discovering  and  applying  the  psy- 
cho-analytic method,  the  writer  is  unable  to 
accept  all  the  conclusions  of  the  Freudian 
theory,  and  finds  himself  therefore  debarred 
from  using  the  term  in  its  technical  sense. 

Some  critics  will  suggest  that  the  principles 
discussed  in  this  book  ought  not  to  be  labelled 
"new."  The  psychological  method  which  is 
outlined  will  seem  to  them  merely  an  elaborate 
way  of  arriving  at  familiar  conclusions.  It 
should  therefore  be  stated  at  the  outset  that 
this  psychology  is  not  "new"  in  the  sense  of 

1  Psycho-analysis,  by  Barbara  Low.  George  Allen  & 
Unwin,  Ltd.,  1920.  p.  10. 

15 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

conflicting  with  all  pre-existing  theories.  On 
the  contrary  its  conclusions  have  often  reaf- 
firmed those  which  the  experience  of  man- 
kind has  long  ago  evolved  and  treasured.  It 
is  undeniable  that  analytical  psychology  re- 
peats a  good  deal  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
nursery;  many  of  the  dictates  of  common 
sense  that  "continuous  experience  of  the  real" ; 
and  it  often  follows  with  slow  feet  to  a  goal 
which  the  insight  of  poets  and  prophets 
reached  at  a  bound.  But  if  it  is  not  always 
revolutionary,  its  method  is  sufficiently  dis- 
tinct from  that  of  the  academic  psychology 
to  justify  and  demand  the  use  of  the  word 
"new."  No  one  who  has  studied  its  concep- 
tions can  fail  to  realize  that  they  introduce  a 
fresh  era  into  psychological  thought.  Lastly, 
we  may  perhaps  borrow  a  reflection  from  an 
exponent  of  "the  new  discipline,"  and  take 
refuge  in  the  thought  that  "The  people  who 
seek  to  prove  that  things  are  not  new  are 
usually  those  who  have  not  the  smallest  inten- 
tion of  making  use  of  them,  whether  new  or 
old."  a 

While  it  is  true  that  the  outlook  of  analy- 
tical psychology  does  not  invariably  lead  to 

1  The  Child's  Path  to  Freedom,  by  Norman  MacMunn. 
G.  Bell  &  Sons,  Ltd.,  1921.    p.  52. 

16 


Introductory 

new  conclusions,  it  certainly  leads  to  some 
which  are  sharply  opposed  to  accepted 
theories,  and  educational  methods  have  been 
heavily  criticized  from  the  standpoint  of 
clinical  psychology.  In  defence  of  the  clinical 
psychologist's  intrusion  into  educational  ques- 
tions, it  must  be  pointed  out  that  he  has  to 
deal  with  many  of  the  products  of  educa- 
tional failure :  they  constitute  a  more  effective 
criticism  than  any  he  could  invent.  And  if 
it  is  argued  that  the  study  of  psycho-pathology 
unfits  one  for  the  understanding  of  normal 
types,  it  must  be  pointed  out  that  while 
psychology  remained  with  its  attention  fixed 
upon  normal  mental  processes,  it  made  no 
startling  advance;  and  that  the  infusion  of 
new  life  into  it  came  from  the  medical  psy- 
chologist's investigation  of  the  phenomena  of 
abnormality. 

We  pass  on  to  ask  what  it  is  that  the  new 
psychology  has  to  offer  to  the  teacher.  What 
are  they  looking  for — these  people  who  flock 
to  meetings  on  psycho-analysis,  and  invest  in 
books  on  the  new  psychology?  Some  of  them 
are  unmistakably  in  search  of  a  swift  and 
magical  solution  of  educational  problems. 
The  burden  of  their  profession  weighs  heavily 
upon  them,  and  the  word  has  gone  round  that 
the  new  knowledge  has  an  answer  to  all  its 
17 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

difficulties.  This  is  of  course  a  vain  quest. 
There  is  no  magical  and  external  solution  to 
such  problems  as  confront  the  teacher,  and 
no  formula  that  will  suddenly  make  him 
master  of  the  intricacies  of  the  child's  mind. 

Some  approach  the  new  psychology  mainly 
with  the  idea  of  analysing  the  children  they 
teach.  The  writer  is  convinced  that  this 
should  not  be  the  purpose  of  its  study.  The 
analysis  of  the  child  and  of  the  adolescent  is 
the  most  delicate  task  that  can  be  assayed.  It 
is  not  required  in  the  case  of  the  normal  child ; 
and  the  abnormal  child  should  never  be  ex- 
posed to  amateur  analysis.  There  is  a  symbol 
which  constantly  occurs  in  dreams — the  sym- 
bol of  the  tooth.  It  represents  the  individual's 
equipment  for  life,  and  especially  his  mental 
equipment,  of  which  a  small  part  is  visible, 
and  the  greater  part  unseen  and  rooted  in  the 
unconscious.  We  may  make  use  of  it  to  em- 
phasize our  present  point.  The  child's  teeth 
represent  only  a  temporary  adjustment  to  life, 
but  the  dentist  knows  that  they  need  to  be 
handled  with  extraordinary  care;  otherwise 
the  permanent  teeth  that  should  follow  will 
be  impaired.  The  mental  adjustment  of  the 
child  or  the  adolescent  needs  to  be  treated  with 
equal  caution. 

The  study  of  the  unconscious  mind  may  of 
18 


Introductory 

course  do  much  to  quicken  the  teacher's  power 
of  observation  and  understanding  of  the  child's 
mental  processes;  but  even  this  is  not  the 
greatest  service  it  can  render.  Its  chief  value 
lies,  not  in  the  direct  light  that  it  throws  on 
the  child,  but  in  its  application  to  the  teacher's 
own  psychology.  It  is  like  the  indirect 
illumination  used  in  microscope  work:  the 
light  is  not  thrown  on  the  object  that  is  being 
studied,  but  upon  a  reflector,  which  needs  to 
be  at  the  correct  angle.  The  chief  gain  which 
the  teacher  may  look  for  from  his  study  of 
the  subject  is  this  kind  of  illumination  of  his 
own  mind,  a  new  power  of  self-knowledge 
which  will  give  him  a  clearer  sight  and  a 
greater  freedom  of  action  in  helping  the 
child. 

The  test  of  the  value  of  a  study  of  analytical 
psychology  lies  in  its  ability  to  increase  the 
teacher's  power  to  give  the  child  spiritual 
freedom.  The  Freudian  School  of  Psycho- 
Analysis  claims  to  have  established  the  fact 
of  a  "thorough-going  determinism  in  the  men- 
tal sphere."  This  is  not  the  place  to  examine 
the  evidence  for  this  view.  Let  us  grant  that 
the  sense  of  spontaneity  in  human  life  may  be 
an  illusion.  If  this  is  so,  it  is  an  illusion 
which  the  writer  believes  that  all  education- 
alists would  do  well  to  cherish  very  jealously. 
19 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

It  seems  to  him  an  essential  part  of  the  equip- 
ment of  the  teacher  or  parent  who  sets  out  to 
make  it  possible  for  his  children  to  attain  to 
spiritual  freedom.  In  working  towards  this 
goal,  the  first  service  that  analytical  psychol- 
ogy can  render  is,  as  has  been  said,  the  freeing 
of  the  teacher's  own  mental  and  emotional 
life  from  bias  and  repression.  Furthermore, 
it  can  increase  his  power  to  help  the  child  in 
three  principal  ways — in  his  adjustment  to 
reality,  in  his  adjustment  to  authority  and  to 
the  herd,  and  in  his  sex  education. 

The  conception  outlined  above  of  the  way 
in  which  analytical  psychology  can  be  of  the 
greatest  service  to  the  teacher  sets  definite  lim- 
its to  the  scope  of  this  book.  Its  purpose  is  to 
answer  some  of  the  questions  of  those  who  are 
asking  what  is  implied  by  the  analytical 
standpoint  towards  oneself,  and  education,  and 
life  in  general.  The  study  of  analytical  psy- 
chology has  clearly  reached  a  point  at  which 
it  has  become  part  of  the  thought  of  educated 
people;  and  it  is  no  longer  possible,  even  if  it 
were  desirable,  to  regard  it  as  the  exclusive 
concern  of  specialists  and  their  patients.  Any 
one  who  speaks  on  this  subject  may  be  sure 
of  applause  if  he  remarks  that  a  little  knowl- 
edge is  a  dangerous  thing.  This  is  unques- 
tionably true  of  the  new  psychology;  but  it  is 
20 


Introductory 

also  true  that  a  little  vision  is  a  great  deal  bet- 
ter than  total  blindness.  Those  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  to  study  the  development  of  the  child 
should  be  least  of  all  likely  to  confuse  the  little 
vision  with  the  thorough  understanding,  or 
to  underrate  the  intricacy  of  the  process  of 
analysis.  This  book  offers  no  encouragement 
to  its  readers  to  assume  the  functions  of  the 
psycho-analysts.  Nor  is  it  intended  to  suggest 
that  self-analysis  has  more  than  a  limited 
value.  When  all  is  said,  however,  it  is  only  a 
minority  who  will  have  the  opportunity  of 
being  analyzed :  the  majority  will  have  to  cre- 
ate their  own  experience  of  analysis  for  them- 
selves. That  experience,  especially  if  it  is  a 
rather  silent  process,  may  be  of  great  value. 
It  will  not  be  entirely  pleasing  to  the  individ- 
ual concerned,  and  those  who  are  not  serious 
will  have  no  inducement  to  go  far  with  it;  for, 
unlike  the  more  sociable  and  conversational 
methods  of  taking  an  interest  in  psycho-anal- 
ysis, it  demands  hard  work  and  perseverance. 
It  is  with  the  idea  of  assisting  some  such  expe- 
rience as  this  that  the  writer  has  accepted  the 
responsibility  of  promoting  "a  little  knowl- 
edge." 

One   further  point  should   be   mentioned. 
The  limits  of  the  book  have  made  it  unavoid- 
able that  some  subjects  should  be  touched  upon 
21 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

with  a  misleading  degree  of  simplicity.  This 
is  particularly  true  of  the  points  at  which 
references  have  been  made  to  the  therapeutic 
aspect  of  analytical  psychology.  For  example, 
no  mention  whatever  has  been  made  to  the 
principle  of  psycho-physical  interaction  and 
to  the  part  played  by  the  physical  factor  in 
neurosis.  This  omission  is  typical  of  others 
which  are  equally  deliberate;  but  the  attention 
of  the  reader  should  be  drawn  to  the  limita- 
tions in  the  scope  of  the  book. 


22 


CHAPTER  II 
AUTHORITY  AND  SUGGESTIBILITY 


EDUCATION  : 

The  two  aspects. 

Their  place  in  educational  theories — 

The  old  regime. 

Froebel. 

Montessori. 
The  goal  of  education. 
Urge  to  completeness. 

SUGGESTIBILITY  : J 

Suggestion  defined  and  illustrated. 

Its  function  in  childhood. 

Its  use  and  abuse  in  the  adult. 

THE  CHILD'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  AUTHORITY: 
The  ultra-suggestible. 
The  rebel. 

The     unconscious     motive     for     and     against 
authority. 

THE  TEACHER'S  EXERCISE  OF  AUTHORITY: 

The  unconscious  motive  for  and  against  it. 

The  instinct  of  patronage. 

The  fear  of  being  ousted. 

The  potter  and  the  clay. 

The  use  of  analytical  psychology. 

1  The  term  suggestibility  is  used  throughout  this  chapter 
in  the  sense  distinguished  by  Baudouin  as  acceptivity,  v. 
Suggestion  and  Auto-suggestion,  by  Charles  Baudouin. 
Geo.  Allen  &  Unwin,  Ltd.,  1920. 


AUTHORITY  AND  SUGGESTIBILITY 

THERE  are  roughly  two  aspects  to  edu- 
cation :  the  one,  the  transmission  of  racial 
experience;  the  other,  the  development  of  the 
individual  psyche.  Each  makes  a  different 
demand  upon  the  child;  and,  if  the  teacher  is 
to  get  below  the  surface  in  his  educational 
methods,  it  is  essential  that  he  should  set  him- 
self to  realize  the  meaning  of  these  demands 
that  are  made  by  himself  or  others,  and  also 
to  understand  the  nature  of  the  child's  reac- 
tion to  them.  These  two  aspects  of  educa- 
tion, the  presentation  of  authority  and  the 
presentation  of  reality,  will  be  discussed  in 
this  and  the  following  chapter. 

Before  entering  upon  this  discussion,  some- 
thing must  be  said  of  the  general  nature  of 
the  educational  process  as  it  appears  to-day. 
A  very  rough  survey  of  the  recent  history  of 
education  is  enough  to  show  that  even  the 
effective  recognition  of  the  two-fold  function 
of  education  is  a  notable  advance.  There 
still  remain  many  traces  of  an  era  in  which 
all  the  emphasis  was  laid  on  the  transmission 
of  learning  and  experience,  the  child  be- 
2$ 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

ing  at  best  but  a  passive  recipient  of  these 
blessings.  These  were  the  days  of  enforced 
attention,  when  education  was  primarily  a 
matter  of  discipline.  The  liberating  influence 
of  Froebel  brought  in  a  better  era :  the  child's 
interest  was  no  longer  to  be  forced,  but  to  be 
set  free;  and  the  most  successful  teacher  was 
he  who  was  most  competent  in  stimulating 
the  interest  of  the  child.  Since  then,  yet 
another  revolutionary  change  has  been  taking 
place,  and  the  old  conception  of  discipline 
has  undergone  a  fresh  transformation.  The 
experiments  of  Madame  Montessori  have  re- 
vealed the  amazing  rapidity  and  the  extraor- 
dinary ease  with  which  a  child  who  has  been 
allowed  his  freedom  in  a  suitable  environment 
acquires  the  necessary  knowledge  with  the 
minimum  of  restraint.  These  changes  have 
redressed  the  balance  in  the  conception  of 
education.  It  is  realized  now  that  the  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  psyche  is  a 
far  more  important  thing  that  the  mere 
acquisition  of  knowledge;  that  the  mediate 
experience  which  has  been  handed  on  to  the 
child  with  such  a  gesture  of  beneficence  is 
really  far  less  time-saving,  and  far  less  val- 
uable than  the  immediate  experience  which 
he  gains  for  himself,  if  he  is  put  in  an  environ- 
26 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

ment  in  which  he  can  gain  it  fairly  easily  and 
fairly  cheaply. 

The  two  aspects  of  education  emphasize, 
respectively,  interest,  producing  self-expres- 
sion; and  attention,  developing  self-control. 
An  educational  system  which  is  based  upon 
the  former  principle  amounts  to  a  challenge 
to  our  whole  outlook  on  the  individual's  life. 
It  is  useless  to  apply  the  theories  of  freedom 
and  responsibility  to  the  first  years  of  a  child's 
life  and  then  to  place  him  in  an  environment 
which  demands  of  him  first  and  foremost  that 
he  should  submit  to  routine  and  drudgery.  If 
a  boy  is  to  be  sent  to  a  public  school  with  a 
perfectly  rigid  and  stereotyped  curriculum, 
and  if  he  is  afterwards  to  be  drafted  into  the 
business  or  profession  which  has  been  chosen 
for  him  by  his  parents,  it  might  well  be  ar- 
gued that  his  education  should  from  the  first 
be  frankly  dedicated  to  the  object  of  control- 
ling his  attention  and  ignoring  his  interest. 
But  if  there  is  any  faith  in  the  possibility  of 
the  child  finding  a  career  in  which  he  can 
truly  express  himself,  then  it  would  appear 
equally  logical  and  consistent  to  direct  his 
education  along  lines  that  may  possibly  lead 
to  a  lesser  capacity  for  drudgery,  but  an  in- 
finitely greater  power  of  self-expression,  and 
a  greater  self  to  express. 
27 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

In  contending  that  the  primary  emphasis  in 
education  should  lie  upon  spontaneous  inter- 
est, it  is  not  necessary  to  underestimate  the 
value  of  attention.  The  clinical  psychologist 
has  special  opportunities  of  realizing  the  im- 
portance of  this  factor  in  the  individual's 
equipment  for  life.  Failure  to  develop  ade- 
quate power  of  attentive  control  often  mani- 
fests itself  in  later  life  in  ill-health  of  body 
and  mind,  and  it  falls  to  the  physician  to  cor- 
rect it  as  best  he  may  by  a  process  of  re-educa- 
tion. The  neurotic  patient  is  often  the  victim 
of  indecision:  he  cannot  make  up  his  mind  on 
any  subject;  he  has  lost  all  will-power.  The 
tendency  in  modern  psychology  is  to  make  will 
and  attention  synonymous ;  and  it  is  a  tendency 
which  is  supported  by  the  experience  of  psy- 
chotherapists. The  temperament  that  is 
sometimes  contemptuously  dismissed  as  "neu- 
rotic" is  often  endowed  with  great  gifts  and 
capabilities,  which  have  been  allowed  to  run 
to  waste  for  lack  of  the  necessary  training. 
Much  can  be  done  in  later  life  by  a  careful 
technique  of  re-education;  but  the  original 
failure  in  the  early  training  of  the  faculties  of 
attentive  control  has  been  responsible  for 
much  irretrievable  loss  both  in  individual 
happiness  and  social  usefulness. 

In  the  light  of  these  discoveries,  how  is  the 
28 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

goal  of  the  child's  development  to  be  con- 
ceived? We  may  speak  of  it  broadly  as  self- 
realization,  using  the  term  to  include  the  com- 
plete adjustment  of  the  individual  to  life  in 
all  its  aspects.  Towards  this  goal  the  child  is 
impelled  by  an  energy  which  is  not  derived 
from  the  influence  of  parents  or  teachers,  or 
from  any  external  source.  The  impulse  to- 
wards growth  is  simply  the  primary  biological 
urge  to  completeness  which  is  found  in  every 
living  thing.  We  come  into  the  world  with 
it,  and  it  remains  as  the  constant  impulse  to- 
wards a  goal  which  is  only  attained  when  we 
reach  maturity,  and  either  express  or  sub- 
limate all  our  instinctive  ambitions  and  poten- 
tialities. It  is  not  primarily  spiritual,  but  bio- 
logical, and  it  is  largely  unconscious.  It  fol- 
lows that  a  great  deal  of  the  child's  growth,  a 
great  many  of  his  ambitions  and  aspirations, 
are  directed  towards  the  primary,  central  and 
perfectly  unconscious  motive  of  ultimate  par- 
enthood, because  this  is  the  essential  biolog- 
ical expression  of  maturity.  The  human  herd 
has  become  so  complex  and  bewildering  a 
thing  that  this  great  fact  of  parenthood,  being 
the  token  and  visible  symbol  of  maturity,  is 
largely  obscured.  Moreover,  the  human  ideal 
of  development  is  not  purely  biological,  but 
has  become  enriched  by  ethical,  social,  and 
29 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

religious  conceptions.  In  spite  of  this,  the 
original,  biological  nature  of  the  impulse  to 
growth  and  to  completeness  is  not  to  be 
ignored. 

It  is  evident  that,  though  this  principle  of 
growth  is  universal,  it  is  not  irresistible.  It 
is  infinitely  liable  to  hindrance  and  deviation 
and  delay  at  all  points.  The  child's  develop- 
ment towards  completeness  is  very  easily 
thwarted.  If  the  urge  to  maturity  is  primar- 
ily biological,  the  barriers  in  its  way  seem  to 
be  almost  invariably  psychological;  and  for 
these  barriers  parents  and  teachers  are  com- 
monly responsible.  We  put  up  a  barrier  when 
we  restrain  children  unnecessarily;  when  we 
put  difficulties  in  the  way  of  their  self-expres- 
sion; when  without  reason  we  demand  that 
they  should  inhibit  interest  and  activity  which 
seem  to  them  to  be  perfectly  harmless.  This 
is  the  barrier  of  authority.  The  second  barrier 
is  raised  when  we  offer  to  the  child  a  world 
that  is  too  harsh,  too  puzzling  and  too  difficult 
for  its  powers  of  adjustment.  This  is  the  bar- 
rier of  reality.  These  are  the  two  great  prob- 
lems for  the  child ;  and  the  test  of  his  achieve- 
ment is  whether,  when  he  reaches  maturity,  he 
has  made  the  three  great  practical  adjustments 
that  life  demands:  the  adjustment  to  society; 
the  adjustment  to  the  mate  (actual  or  poten- 
30 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

tial) ;  and  the  adjustment  to  the  Infinite.  Fail- 
ure at  either  of  these  points  speaks  of  hindered 
development  and  the  falling-short  of  complete 
self-realization. 

The  conception  of  education  that  has  been 
outlined  above  is  one  that  underlies  the  studies 
in  this  book.  For  the  sake  of  clearness  it 
seemed  well  to  state  it  at  the  outset,  though 
in  a  somewhat  brief  and  dogmatic  form.  It 
is  hoped  that  the  rest  of  the  book  explains 
and  amplifies  it,  and  gives  to  the  reader  op- 
portunities of  criticizing  it  in  a  more  detailed 
form. 

Returning  to  the  two  aspects  of  education 
— the  transmission  of  racial  experience  and 
the  development  of  the  individual  psyche — 
we  find  that  there  are  two  characteristics  of 
childhood  that  demand  special  study:  the  first 
is  suggestibility,  and  the  second  is  phantasy. 
Both  have  a  genetic  value;  both  are  associated 
with  development;  and  both,  like  the  thymus 
gland,  should  entirely,  or  to  a  great  extent, 
vanish  by  the  time  that  the  individual  reaches 
maturity.  Both  tend  to  persist,  and  their  per- 
sistence spells  discord  and  inefficiency  in  the 
adult.  This  can  generally  be  traced  to  some 
failure  in  the  environment  or  upbringing  of 
the  individual;  and  since  the  teacher  may  be 
responsible  for  this,  he  needs  to  understand 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

the  function  of  these  two  characteristics.  The 
present  chapter  deals  with  the  first — sugges- 
tibility, which  is  concerned  with  the  child's 
reaction  to  authority. 

Suggestibility1  may  be  defined  as  the  attain- 
ment of  a  state  of  mind  or  the  execution  of  an 
act  upon  an  inadequate  rational  basis.  It  is,  in 
other  words,  blind  acceptance  of  authority  in 
any  form.  We  speak  of  the  suggestibility  of 
primitive  peoples;  but  a  more  obvious  instance 
is  our  own  susceptibility  to  the  power  of  ad- 
vertisement. The  whole  function  of  the  ad- 
vertisement manager,  the  salesman  and  the 
auctioneer,  is  to  exploit  the  tendency  to  buy 
goods  upon  an  inadequate  rational  basis. 
Equally  obvious  is  the  suggestibility  of  read- 
ers of  the  daily  press,  who  accept  opinions  on 
politics,  religion,  art,  or  amusement,  with 
the  minimum  of  independent  investigation. 
Nevertheless,  in  so  far  as  we  are  mature,  we 
suppose  ourselves  to  have  attained  to  the 
power  of  independent  judgment,  and  to  be  no 
longer  exposed  to  the  abuses  of  suggestibility. 
There  are  some  who  are  so  much  alive  to  these 
dangers  that  they  would  try  to  demand,  even 
from  the  child,  that  his  thought  and  action 
should  be  founded  entirely  upon  a  consciously 
rational  basis.  In  so  doing,  they  ignore  an 

1  v.  supra,  p.  24,  note. 
32 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

important  psychological  distinction  between 
the  child  and  the  adult.  If  the  child  is  in- 
fluenced by  the  injunction  that  he  shall  wait 
until  the  'bus  stops  before  dismounting,  he  is 
manifesting  a  degree  of  suggestibility  that  is 
entirely  advantageous  both  to  himself  and  to 
the  community.  Suggestibility  in  the  child 
has  a  genetic  value,  which  lies  in  the  possi- 
bility of  transmitting  rapidly  to  a  child  a  great 
amount  of  racial  experience,  while  he  is  still 
incapable  of  fully  apprehending  the  rational 
basis  of  it.  It  is  the  substitution  of  mediate 
for  immediate  experience.  We  save  him  from 
breaking  his  neck  by  remembering  our  own 
early  experiments  in  falling  off  a  'bus,  and  all 
the  later  considerations  which  have  taught  us 
to  seek  safety  first.  We  cannot  expect  the 
child  to  apprehend  the  significance  of  the  law 
of  the  conservation  of  energy,  or  any  other 
restraining  thought,  when  he  is  solely  engaged 
with  the  idea  of  leaving  the  'bus  at  the  point 
nearest  to  the  Zoo.  Neither  can  we  expect  the 
child  to  take  into  consideration  the  demands 
of  the  herd.  If  he  goes  from  the  dining-room 
to  the  nursery,  his  one  preoccupation  is  to  get 
there.  He  sees  no  reason  to  waste  time  in 
stopping  to  shut  the  door;  he  has  no  objection 
to  open  doors:  why  should  grown-ups?  We 
rightly  make  use  of  suggestion  to  claim  from 
33 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

the  child  a  compliance  with  the  demands  of 
the  herd,  for  which  he  can  realize  no  adequate 
reason.  The  two  facts  in  the  child's  position 
which  demand  the  use  of  suggestion  are,  there- 
fore, first,  his  inexperience  of  causal  relations; 
and  secondly,  his  inability  to  apprehend  the 
claims  of  the  community.  Neither  of  these 
conditions  should  apply  to  the  adult,  but  there 
are  some  who,  in  the  latter  respect,  remain 
children  all  their  lives.  They  prate  about  the 
liberty  of  the  individual ;  they  whine  over  the 
income-tax;  they  fail  at  every  point  to  visual- 
ize the  reciprocal  obligation  of  the  unit  and 
the  herd.  Most  adults  get  past  this  stage  of 
development,  and  grasp  the  collective  aim  of 
society.  But  it  is  only  a  minority  that  gets 
beyond  that,  to  the  parental  view,  which  im- 
plies the  readiness  to  sacrifice  self-interest,  not 
only  for  the  social  demands  of  this  generation, 
but  also,  and  still  more  so,  for  those  of  the 
next.  Thus  the  child  has  to  pass  from  an  indi- 
vidual aim  in  life  to  a  collective  aim.  But  his 
judgment  undergoes  the  reverse  transforma- 
tion :  he  begins  by  being  subject  to  the  opinion 
of  the  elders  who  constitute  his  environ- 
ment; gradually  this  subjection  should  give 
way  to  an  individual  judgment  in  all  matters 
that  are  vital.  If  we  set  ourselves  primarily 
to  fashion  his  conduct,  we  shall  abuse  his  sug- 
34 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

gestibility,  and  stunt  the  growth  of  his  dis- 
crimination; if  we  ignore  behaviour,  and  deal 
exclusively  with  his  reason,  we  shall  waste 
much  precious  time,  risk  many  disasters,  and 
produce  a  citizen  of  doubtful  value.  It  must 
be  our  aim,  therefore,  to  bring  up  children  so 
that  they  respect  all  racial  experience,  and  at 
the  same  time  learn,  in  due  course,  to  challenge 
all  authority.  Authority  must  not  be  regarded 
as  ultimately  binding,  nor  must  it  be  disre- 
garded without  respectful  consideration. 

The  destiny  of  the  child  is  social  efficiency; 
the  problem  of  the  child  is  psychical  freedom; 
the  obstacle  to  the  child  is  authority;  and  the 
test  of  every  child's  development  is  his  final 
attitude  towards  racial  experience. 

The  progress  of  the  child  towards  this  goal 
may  be  roughly  represented  in  a  diagram.  The 

ff/tra  SvyyestiM? 


rebel 

child  starts  from  O  on  his  journey,  and  at  A 

meets  the  gate  of  authority.     If  that  gate  is 

35 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

open,  he  passes  straight  on  towards  his  goal. 
If  it  be  shut,  or  insufficiently  open,  and  he 
fails  to  pass  through,  his  path  deviates  in  one 
or  two  directions :  either  he  becomes  ultra-sug- 
gestible, and  continues  to  accept  authority  in  a 
childish  way,  or,  else  he  becomes  the  heretic, 
who  rebels,  witn  an  equal  failure  of  individual 
judgment,  against  all  forms  of  authority. 
Whichever  of  these  alternatives  result  from 
the  clash  with  authority,  the  individual  sets 
himself  to  weave  a  myth,  the  strands  of  which 
are  inextricably  mingled  with  his  every 
thought  and  action.  He  cannot  accept  the 
truth  involved  in  his  situation,  and  therefore 
he  has  to  explain  away  to  himself  his  tendency 
to  react  too  much  or  too  little  to  authority. 
He  has  to  satisfy  himself  that  his  undue  plas- 
ticity in  the  face  of  authority  is  not  what  it 
seems,  but  a  rational  attitude;  or  that  his  un- 
due resistance  to  every  form  of  authority  is 
based  on  the  superiority  of  his  own  judgment. 
These  two  types — the  ultra-suggestible  and 
the  rebel — must  be  perfectly  familiar  to  every 
observer  of  human  nature.  The  ultra-sug- 
gestible responds  inevitably  to  the  opinion  of 
the  majority,  and  to  the  ruling  of  fashion 
which  is  accepted  by  the  group  in  which  he 
moves.  He  may  be  led  thus  to  become  a  sup- 
porter of  the  Established  Church,  and  a  rep- 

36 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

resentative  of  political  and  social  decorum. 
This  is  perhaps  his  natural  home,  for  he  is 
conscious  of  the  support  of  a  large  body  of 
opinion  among  his  fellow-countrymen.  But 
people  whose  lot  is  cast  among  minorities  and 
heresies  may  be  equally  influenced  by  sug- 
gestion to  embrace  these  opinions.  They  re- 
spond to  the  dominant  authority  in  their  im- 
mediate surroundings,  and  become  free-think- 
ers and  revolutionaries  from  sheer  orthodoxy. 
When  they  come  in  contact  with  a  wider  circle 
their  views  may  change,  and  they  may  find 
what  seems  to  them  an  irresistible  inner  con- 
viction leading  them  to  the  stronghold  of  a 
more  general  orthodoxy.  Behind  the  variation 
of  their  opinions  lies  the  constant  psycholog- 
ical factor  of  suggestibility.  The  reverse 
process  is  seen  in  the  individual  whose  reac- 
tion to  authority  has  taken  the  form  of  the 
rebel  tendency.  He  carries  with  him  an  in- 
ward resistance  to  all  authority  as  such;  he 
must  always  be  "  agin'  the  Government,"  no 
matter  what  measure  is  under  discussion. 
Minorities  and  lost  causes  are  his  special  de- 
partment. In  all  circumstances  of  life  his  ear 
is  unnaturally  quick  to  catch  the  Tyrant- Rebel 
motif.  He  plays  many  parts;  and  perhaps  his 
greatest  is  that  of  Prometheus.  Defiance  on 
behalf  of  the  whole  human  race  in  the  face  of 
37 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

divine  oppression  is  heresy  on  the  grand  scale. 

It  is  clear  enough  that  both  these  tendencies 
contain  elements  that  are  essential  to  the  com- 
munity. Even  in  their  cruder  forms  they  may 
be  useful  instruments;  and  they  may  be  trans- 
formed into  motives  of  direct  service.  Our 
immediate  concern,  however,  is  to  point  to 
their  development  as  a  product  of  the  unwise 
use  of  authority,  and  to  show  how  they  inval- 
idate judgment.  The  person  who  has  been 
diverted  from  the  normal  path  as  regards  his 
attitude  to  authority  is  likely  to  fall  short  of 
the  full  attainment  of  self-realization  and  so- 
cial efficiency.  His  judgments  and  his  actions 
cannot  be  accepted  at  their  surface  value:  too 
much  allowance  has  to  be  made  for  emotional 
bias.  Suggestion  may  be  used  to  enforce  very 
admirable  opinions;  but  the  person  who  has 
acquired  them  by  this  process  holds  them  in 
a  precarious  and  unsatisfactory  way.  Judg- 
ments that  are  made  in  virtue  of  the  heresy 
tendency  are  equally  the  product  of  a  second- 
rate  mental  mechanism. 

It  is  probable  that  no  one  can  read  an  ac- 
count of  the  two  types  without  feeling  a  slight 
bias  towards  one  or  the  other:  a  faint  suspi- 
cion that  the  writer  has  been  a  little  hard  on 
one  type,  or  has  let  one  down  rather  lightly; 
a  passing  reflection  that  at  least  it  is  better  that 

38 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

a  child  should  be  over-sensitive  to  national 
tradition  than  that  he  should  be  indifferent  or 
hostile  towards  it;  or  perhaps  a  slight  emo- 
tional reaction  to  the  idea  of  Prometheus.  In 
so  far  as  this  is  true,  our  own  judgment  is 
likely  to  be  at  fault. 

We  have  been  considering  the  effect  upon 
the  child  of  his  experience  of  authority.  It 
leads  to  the  consideration  of  unconscious 
motives  in  adult  life,  and  we  find  ourselves 
asking,  not  only  what  opinions  a  person  holds, 
but  also  why  he  holds  them.  The  same  method 
must  be  applied  in  considering  education  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  teacher.  What  meth- 
ods do  we  believe  in;  and  why  do  we  believe 
in  them?  In  so  far  as  we  are  biased  towards 
heresy,  we  shall  always  be  attracted  by  the 
new  method,  especially  when  it  is  most 
strongly  opposed  to  the  old  (unless  we  are 
working  under  an  authority  so  progressive 
that  it  becomes  necessary  to  develop  a  heresy 
of  reaction).  It  would  appear  a  very  simple 
matter  to  detect  this  or  the  opposite  tendency; 
but  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  what  appears 
from  without  as  bias,  prejudice  and  bigotry, 
appears  from  within  as  rational  and  well- 
founded  conviction.  If  it  is  a  simple  matter 
of  good  will  and  intention,  how  shall  one  ac- 
count for  the  failures  of  education :  the  chil- 
39 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

dren  who  grow  up  with  a  permanent  inability 
for  an  unbiased  attitude  towards  authority? 
The  keepers  of  the  gate  of  authority  need  the 
clearest  insight  into  their  own  motives  if  they 
are  to  discharge  their  duty  fairly.  The  teach- 
er's own  experience  of  authority  may  be  the 
source  of  his  strongest  bias;  but  there  are 
many  others.  The  snare  of  patronage  is  al- 
ways a  danger  to  the  grown-up.  We  enjoy 
being  in  a  position  to  patronize  the  young, 
and  in  so  doing  believe  that  we  are  adopting 
the  true  parental  attitude  towards  them.  That 
this  is  the  attitude  of  many  parents  is  only  too 
obvious;  but  it  is  the  negation  of  the  true 
parental  outlook,  because  it  refuses  the  child 
the  essential  condition  of  growth,  namely 
freedom.  The  snare  of  jealousy  is  no  less  real 
a  danger — that  jealousy  of  the  old  towards  the 
young  which  is  seen  in  every  gregarious  spe- 
cies. The  old  wolf  has  enjoyed  the  mastery 
of  the  pack,  but  when  he  begins  to  feel  his 
teeth  getting  loose  he  realizes  that  his  days 
of  mastery,  and  therefore  of  life,  are  num- 
bered ;  and  he  develops  an  inordinate  desire  to 
crush  the  rival  whom  he  has  hitherto  regarded 
merely  as  a  junior.  Such  an  idea  is  so  far 
out  of  keeping  with  our  conception  of  our- 
selves as  educators  that  it  may  seem  a  remote 
and  unreal  danger:  that  is  to  say,  it  is  more 
40 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

likely  to  be  an  unconscious  than  a  conscious 
motive.  As  such,  it  may  exert  an  unsuspected 
influence  on  conduct. 

There  is  another  tendency  which  leads  the 
teacher  to  the  wrong  use  of  authority:  and 
that  is  the  instinct  of  the  potter  to  mould  the 
clay  according  to  his  heart's  desire;  to  be  con- 
cerned primarily  with  the  result,  and  to  ignore 
the  process  whereby  it  is  achieved.  The  use 
of  suggestion  in  medicine  throws  some  light 
at  this  point  upon  its  use  in  education.  The 
clinical  psychologist  can  often  achieve  star- 
tling results  by  suggestive  therapeutics ;  and  in 
a  certain  amount  of  perfectly  ethical  medical 
work  this  means  is  rightly  employed.  There 
are  nervous  conditions  in  children  and  in  old 
people  for  which  this  is  the  most  suitable  form 
of  treatment.  There  are  cases — certain  drug 
addictions,  for  example — in  which  it  is  of 
great  value  in  breaking  the  force  of  physical 
and  mental  habit,  as  a  preliminary  to  cure. 
But  the  power  to  achieve  results  is  not  in  itself 
justification  for  the  choice  of  this  method.  It 
is  one  that  makes  use  of  an  infantile  com- 
ponent in  the  patient's  mental  make-up,  and 
therefore  tends  to  emphasize  a  characteristic 
which  ought  no  longer  to  be  exerting  an  active 
influence  upon  his  adult  life.  In  like  manner, 
the  educator  may  obtain  great  results  by  mak- 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

ing  use  of  the  child's  suggestibility.  The  be- 
haviour, conduct  and  outward  bearing  of  the 
child  may  be  extraordinarily  altered  and  dig- 
nified by  the  use  of  authority.  Up  to  a  certain 
point  this  is  necessary  and  desirable;  but  if, 
as  a  result,  the  child  is  becoming  permanently 
suggestible,  or  if  the  teacher  is  sowing  the 
seeds  of  heresy  and  rebellion,  then  he  is  paying 
too  high  a  price  for  the  apparent  improve- 
ment in  behaviour,  and  he  needs  to  resist  the 
temptation  to  work  for  rapid  results,  just  as 
the  doctor  needs  to  be  on  his  guard  against 
trading  on  the  suggestibility  of  the  patient  to 
produce  a  rapid  cure. 

And,  finally,  as  he  grows  older,  the  teacher's 
exercise  of  authority  may  become  marked  by 
that  complacent  rigidity  which  is  of  the  es- 
sence of  reaction.  The  school  master  of  this 
type  will  cheerfully  crush  and  mangle  the 
character  of  a  dull  boy  in  forcing  him  through 
a  public  school  entrance  or  responsions,  be- 
cause he  knows  nothing  of  education  but  Eton 
and  Balliol,  and  because  he  is  too  blind  to  see 
that  in  the  unequal  contest  self-realization  is 
being  made  impossible. 

It  will  be  said  that  there  is  no  need  of  a  new 
psychology  to  discover  that  there  are  mis- 
guided teachers  who  fall  into  all  these  obvious 
perils  in  the  use  of  authority,  and  the  abuse 
42 


Authority  and  Suggestibility 

of  the  child's  suggestibility.  This  is  true;  but 
the  reason  why  it  is  considered  relevant  to 
enumerate  them  here  is  that  the  new  psychol- 
ogy has  cast  a  fresh,  and  rather  a  lurid,  light 
on  the  results  of  these  mistakes.  The  clinical 
psychologist  is  confronted  with  the  victim  of 
educational  failure,  and  learns  the  story  of 
thwarted  development  and  misdirected  growth 
which  lies  behind  his  disability.  The  study 
of  these  cases  need  not  blind  him  to  the  vast 
number  of  children  who  have  passed  safely 
along  the  road  towards  self-realization;  but 
it  is  does  point  to  the  existence  of  a  consid- 
erable body  of  men  and  women  who  have  been 
unnecessarily  hindered  in  their  development. 
And  it  also  suggests  that  the  barriers  in  their 
path  have  not  as  a  rule  been  erected  by  ex- 
ceptionally malevolent  or  discreditable  edu- 
cationalists :  quite  the  contrary.  It  is  believed, 
therefore,  that  an  acquaintance  with  the 
methods  and  the  findings  of  analytical  psy- 
chology will  help  the  teacher  both  to  under- 
stand the  mental  processes  of  the  child,  and 
to  avoid  some  of  those  dangers  of  unconscious 
bias  and  prejudice  in  himself  that  are  some- 
times at  work  in  contradiction  to  his  conscious 
purpose. 


43 


CHAPTER  III 
REALITY  AND  PHANTASY 


THE  NATURE  OF  PHANTASY. 

COMPENSATORY  PHANTASY: 
Normal. 
Abnormal. 

Relation  between  the  two. 
The  child  and  the  adult. 

INSPIRATORY  PHANTASY: 

The  attempt  to  transcend   present  knowledge 

and  experience. 
The    pragmatic    tests:    relation    to    reality — 

progressive  or  regressive. 

CREATIVE  PHANTASY: 

Practical  and  artistic. 
The  test  of  social  value. 

SOCIAL  PHANTASY: 

Its  apparent  "objectivity." 
Its  relation  to  reality. 

"  DEVELOPING  THE  CHILD'S  IMAGINATION  " : 
Protest  against  the  shibboleth. 
Fairy  tales,  good  and  bad. 
The  mythology  of  the  unconscious. 

PHANTASY  OR  REALITY: 
Peter  Pan. 


REALITY  AND  PHANTASY 


'T'^HE  last  chapter  was  concerned  with  the 
•*•  struggle  of  the  developing  child  in  rela- 
tion to  the  authority-independence  principle. 
We  pass  from  that  to  consider  the  phantasy- 
reality  principle,  which  involves  a  struggle  of 
comparable  importance.  Phantasy,  like  sug- 
gestibility, is  a  characteristic  of  childhood: 
both  tendencies  have  their  racial  value;  both 
must  be  to  a  great  extent  discarded  before  the 
individual  can  be  said  to  have  reached  matur- 
ity; both  are  primary  factors  in  educability, 
and  both  are  capable  of  abuse  by  educators. 
Phantasy  is  like  an  air-cushion:  there  is 
nothing  in  it,  but  it  eases  the  joints  wonder- 
fully. It  is  the  magic  that  tempers  the  winds 
of  reality  to  the  shorn  lamb.  It  smooths  the 
path  of  the  child's  adjustment  to  reality;  and 
when  that  reality  offers  too  menacing  an  as- 
pect, it  provides  a  way  of  escape.  It  may  be 
stimulated  from  within,  and  find  expression 
in  day-dreams,  castles  in  the  air,  and  in  all 
forms  of  imagining  and  pretending;  or  it  may 
be  stimulated  from  without  by  fairy-  tales, 
legends,  fables,  myths  and  allegories.  All 
47 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

these  are  of  the  stuff  of  phantasy.  What  part 
should  they  play  in  the  life  of  the  child?  And 
how  far  must  they  be  discarded  by  the  adult? 
In  order  to  answer  these  questions,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  distinguish  various  forms  of  phantasy. 
The  first,  and  by  far  the  most  common,  is 
the  compensatory  phantasy.  In  the  child,  it 
is,  in  moderation,  a  perfectly  normal  response 
to  the  harshness,  rigidity  or  monotony  of  real 
life.  The  weak  little  boy  has  day-dreams  in 
which  he  performs  incredible  feats  of  strength 
and  valour.  The  little  girl,  who  has  been  told 
that  she  is  ugly,  pictures  herself  as  a  princess 
of  transcendent  beauty.  Sometimes  the  phan- 
tasy takes  the  form  of  an  elaborate  story  or 
mental  picture ;  sometimes  it  is  merely  a  pass- 
ing wish.  The  latter  form  is  faithfully  illus- 
trated in  Miss  Fyleman's  verses: 

I  wish  I  liked  rice  pudding; 
I  wish  I  were  a  twin; 
I  wish  some  day  a  real  live  fairy 
Would  just  come  walking  in. 

I  wish  when  I'm  at  table 

My  feet  would  touch  the  floor; 

I  wish  our  pipes  would  burst  next  winter, 

Just  like  they  did  next  door. 

I  wish  that  I  could  whistle 
Real  proper  grown-up  tunes; 

48 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

I  wish  they'd  let  me  sweep  the  chimneys 
On  rainy  afternoons. 

I've  got  such  heaps  of  wishes, 

I've  only  said  a  few: 

I  wish  that  I  could  wake  some  morning 

And  find  they'd  all  come  true! 

These  lines,  written  with  astonishing  insight 
into  the  child's  mind,  show  how  harmless,  nat- 
ural and  disarming  is  the  normal  phantasy  of 
childhood,  and  how  obvious  is  the  compen- 
satory mechanism  at  work.  But,  while  the 
phantasy  tendency  is  perfectly  normal  in  the 
child,  it  is  not  so  in  the  adult.  For  him  it  is 
a  regression ;  and  he  should  no  longer  maintain 
the  habit  of  obtaining  satisfaction  by  picturing 
himself,  his  circumstances,  or  his  destiny,  in 
a  way  that  bears  no  relation  to  reality.  It  is, 
therefore,  part  of  the  normal  process  of  devel- 
opment that  the  phantasy  tendency  should 
gradually  diminish  in  exactly  the  same  way 
as  the  tendency  to  suggestibility  should  dimin- 
ish. The  failure  of  this  process  may  be  seen 
in  an  example  taken  from  the  abnormal. 

The  phantasy  takes  the  form  of  a  letter, 
written  by  a  boy  of  fourteen — the  only  child 
of  a  widow,  who  was  also  a  Christian  Scientist. 
His  mother  believed  him  to  be  the  most  won- 
derful boy  in  the  world,  and  taught  him  to 
49 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

share  her  belief.  She  kept  him  at  home  until 
he  was  fourteen.  At  that  age  he  was  sent  to 
a  boarding-school,  and  to  his  surprise  found 
himself  in  the  bottom  class,  the  bottom  game, 
and  in  every  way  in  a  position  of  acute  in- 
feriority. The  sympathy  that  he  might  have 
gained  in  these  circumstances  was  continually 
being  alienated  by  his  own  reaction  to  them: 
a  smile  of  bland  and  imperturbable  superior- 
ity. He  was  unable  to  adjust  himself  to  the 
hard  and  humbling  realities  of  school  life. 
When  he  had  been  at  school  some  months  the 
following  letter  was  found  written  by  him : 

"DEAR  SIR  or  MADAM, — 

"I  am  a  member  of  School.  I  have  a  friend 

here  who  has  a  great  belief  in  a  strange  yet  wonderful 
theory,  which  he  believes  has  been  told  him  by  the  great 
Author  and  Giver  of  all  things,  namely  God. 

"The  theory  which  I  am  going  to  set  forth  before  you 
in  the  following  pages  (as  he  told  it  to  me  in  the  first 
person  I  will  write  it  so)  is  open  for  your  free  personal 
criticisms,  which  should  kindly  be  addressed  to  me  at  the 
above  address. 

"I  feel  that  I  ought  to  make  mention  of  the  fact  that 
my  friend  has  never  told  anybody  in  the  world  of  the 
theory  before,  and  has  been  expecting  it  to  happen  to 
him  each  day  for  the  last  six  years  or  so,  so  that  nothing 
can  remove  it ;  there  it  is  set  out  as  he  told  it  to  me. 

"I  have  been  expecting  for  many  years  to  become  the 
most  wonderful  man  upon  this  earth — in  fact,  you  can 
hardly  say  upon  this  earth,  exactly,  as  I  shall  be  immortal. 

50 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

"I  shall  have  magic  lifts,  which  will  run  between 
heaven  and  earth.  Heaven  will  be  my  native  land,  and 
I  shall  be  sort  of  let  into  Heaven  by  the  back  door,  so 
to  speak.  That  is  to  say  that  I  expect  I  shall  not  be 
like  an  ordinary  human  being,  but  if  God  will  give  me 
all  these  things,  I  will  pay  Him  back  by  doing  the  work 
set  forth  by  my  Father  to  my  utmost  capability.  To 
continue,  my  work  will  mainly  consist  in  schoolmaster- 
ing  and  as  a  doctor. 

"I  shall  have  an  absolutely  new  and  perfect  immortal 
body,  which  can  be  suited  to  either  climates.  It  will 
also  be  controlled  by  electricity  throughout,  controlled 
by  switches  fastened  in  my  body,  enabling  me  to  have 
(i)  strength  to  give  the  most  collosal  kick  known;  (2) 
to  make  myself  invisible;  (3)  to  fly  through  the  air. 

"I  shall  know  all  that  is  known,  or  ever  will  be  known, 
including  all  the  languages  of  the  world. 

"I  shall  have  a  brother,  who  will  be  born  and  bred  in 
Heaven,  so  to  speak. 

"I  shall  also  have  an  extremely  wonderful  motor-car, 
which  will  be  able  to  speak,  but  very  shy. 

"I  shall  have  as  much  money  as  I  want,  my  allowance 
being  £i  per  day,  or  £6  ios.  per  week. 

"I  can  imagine  myself  in  this  other  life  of  which  I 
have  told  you  about.  Of  course,  no  human  being  will 
be  allowed  to  enter  Heaven  during  his  lifetime,  except 
to  go  into  the  Healing-Room.  The  fare,  which  go  to  the 
Heaven  Lift  Company  (the  power  station  of  which  will 
be  in  the  Upper  World),  will  be  $d.  I  can  also  imagine 
myself  doing  many  things  in  this  other  life,  for  instance, 
counting  the  money  at  the  end  of  the  day  in  the  lift, 
and  taking  it  to  the  bank. 

"I  presume  that  I  shall  wake  up  in  Heaven  one 
morning  in  a  sort  of  motor-car  bed,  in  the  sunshine  of 

51 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

this  new  world,  and  can  imagine  running  about  the  town 
in  this  car." 

This  document  obviously  exceeds  the  limits 
of  normal  phantasy,  but  it  illustrates  exactly 
the  same  compensatory  tendency  in  an  exag- 
gerated form.  The  boy  identifies  himself  with 
a  friend,  who  is  in  the  confidence  of  the  Al- 
mighty, and  therefore  in  a  position  of  supreme 
privilege  and  superiority.  He  is  the  most 
wonderful  man  upon  earth :  here  is  compensa- 
tion for  being  the  least-regarded  boy  in  the 
whole  school.  He  was  lazy;  and  the  need  for 
exertion,  physical  or  mental,  was  another  of 
the  hard  realities  of  life  which  he  was  unable 
to  face.  Therefore  his  phantasy  is  full  of 
magical  solutions. 

There  is  the  lift — a  familiar  dream-symbol 
of  effortless  achievement.  A  woman  of  thirty- 
two,  who  had  been  brought  up  by  two  mis- 
guided and  adoring  parents,  and  had  been  un- 
able to  develop  self-reliance  and  individuality, 
once  had  a  dream  that  she  was  staying  in  an 
hotel;  that  she  walked  upstairs  to  her  parents' 
room,  and  that  they  were  angry  with  her  for 
not  having  asked  for  the  lift.  It  was  true: 
their  policy  had  always  been  to  save  her  effort. 

Again,  electricity  plays  an  important  part 
in  the  phantasy.  To  every  modern  child  who 
52 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

is  familiar  with  electric  light  and  power  the 
electric  switch  is  the  natural  symbol  for  the 
greatest  result  with  the  least  exertion.  By 
merely  turning  on  the  switch  this  boy  was  to 
be  enabled  to  give  the  most  colossal  kick 
known;  to  become  invisible,  and  to  fly  through 
the  air.  It  needs  but  little  imagination  to  call 
up  the  scenes  to  which  these  powers  are  com- 
pensatory: the  times  when  he  had  been  kicked 
by  other  boys,  or  chased  round  the  playground, 
with  good  reason  for  wishing  to  become  in- 
visible. Flying  through  the  air  is  a  common 
and  significant  symbol  of  phantasy  itself:  the 
escape  from  the  terra  firma  of  reality.  Com- 
pensation for  stupidity  at  lessons  is  found  in 
the  phantasy  of  knowing  all  that  is  known  or 
ever  will  be  known.  The  boy  longed  to  escape 
from  his  schoolfellows,  but  none  the  less,  he 
was  lonely;  and  his  longing  for  fellowship 
finds  expression  in  the  idea  of  a  "brother  in 
Heaven" — the  ideal  companion  who  would 
make  no  exacting  demands  upon  him.  The 
motor-car  symbolizes  progress  without  effort; 
and  the  conception  of  the  motor-car  bed  raises 
the  symbol  to  a  higher  power  of  ease. 

The  phantasy  can  be  related  at  every  point 
to  the  boy's  life,  but  at  every  point  it  is  a  with- 
drawal and  a  retreat  from  reality.     It  repre- 
sents the  phantasy  tendency,  no  longer  in  its 
53 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

normal  function  of  easing  the  child's  adjust- 
ment to  reality,  but  in  an  acutely  morbid  form. 
And  yet  it  is  not  so  far  removed  from  mental 
processes  which  are  accepted  as  normal.  Its 
main  idea  of  effortless  salvation,  the  indi- 
vidual's demand  for  preferential  treatment,  is 
not  an  uncommon  thought,  though  it  seldom 
expresses  itself  so  ingenuously  as  in  the  aspira- 
tion to  be  "  let  into  Heaven  by  the  back  door, 
so  to  speak."  The  choice  of  the  occupations 
of  the  school  master  and  the  doctor  is  clearly 
determined  by  the  idea  that  these  are  the  two 
most  patronizing  professions:  a  sobering 
thought  both  for  the  readers  of  this  book  and 
for  its  writer.  Again,  it  is  impossible  not  to 
relate  to  the  situation  the  fact  of  the  boy's 
upbringing  as  a  Christian  Scientist;  for  Chris- 
tian Science  is  to  a  large  extent  based  on  a 
phantasy  of  health,  which  is  a  retreat  from 
reality.  The  sufferer  refuses  to  accept  the 
fact  that  he  has  toothache,  and  describes  it  as 
a  "false  claim,"  thereby  making  use  of  this 
same  principle  of  attempting  to  twist  reality 
into  a  congenial  form,  rather  than  adapt  one- 
self to  its  uncongenial  elements. 

During  the  war  there  were  many  people 
who  refused  to  accept  the  circumstantial  evi- 
dence of  the  death  of  a  son  or  husband.    A 
widow,  wearing  deep  mourning,  admitted  to 
54 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

the  writer  that  she  was  convinced  that  her  hus- 
band was  not  dead,  despite  the  fact  that  he  had 
been  missing  for  two  years,  and  that  after  nine 
months  he  had  been — in  the  official  language 
— "presumed  dead."  Her  "conviction"  was 
clearly  a  compensatory  phantasy,  protecting 
her  from  the  conscious  realization  of  her  loss. 
It  might  appear  that  in  such  circumstances 
the  adult,  no  less  than  the  child,  is  entitled  to 
protection  from  the  keen  winds  of  reality,  and 
that  we  should  accept  as  a  merciful  dispensa- 
tion the  mental  mechanism  which  makes  pos- 
sible a  temporary  escape  from  the  intolerable 
fact.  But  this  view  becomes  impossible  when 
the  effect  of  compensatory  phantasy  in  the  life 
of  the  adult  is  more  closely  examined.  In  so 
far  as  it  is  successfully  indulged  in,  it  means 
loss  of  contact  with  the  reality  of  outward 
experience :  and  that  way  neurosis  lies.  And 
it  destroys  the  unity  of  the  inner  life  by  setting 
up  a  contradiction  between  the  conscious  and 
the  unconscious,  for  while  the  individual  be- 
lieves in  his  phantasy,  he  is  repressing  his  own 
apprehension  of  the  obvious  reality.  At  this 
price  the  consolations  of  phantasy  are  too 
dearly  bought.  The  study  of  these  considera- 
tions points  to  the  view  which  has  already  been 
stated — that  the  function  of  compensatory 
phantasy  is  genetic:  it  has  a  special  part  to 
55 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

play  in  childhood,  and  it  should  diminish, 
almost  to  the  point  of  disappearance,  in  the 
progress  to  maturity. 

Although  the  factor  of  compensation  plays 
so  prominent  a  part  in  the  phantasies  both  of 
the  child  and  of  the  adult,  it  is  not  always  the 
chief  factor.  One  motive  of  phantasy  is  the 
attempt  to  transcend  the  limits  of  present 
knowledge  or  experience.  Unsatisfied  curi- 
osity is  responsible  for  much  phantasy-weav- 
ing. A  child  who  travelled  between  Australia 
and  England  several  times  kept  asking  her 
parents  what  life  was  like  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea.  As  they  never  gave  her  a  satisfactory 
answer  she  developed  the  most  elaborate  phan- 
tasies. A  small  boy  was  sure  that  the  Holy 
Ghost  was  a  huge  gasometer.  All  children 
will  weave  sexual  phantasies,  so  long  as  they 
are  kept  ignorant  or  deceived  on  these  sub- 
jects. Mental  activity  of  this  type  is  the  raw 
material  of  the  speculative  tendency,  where  it 
seeks  to  push  knowledge  to  its  farthest  limits. 
Many  of  the  discoveries  and  inventions  of  sci- 
ence seem  to  have  gained  their  first  footing  in 
the  minds  of  men  in  the  form  of  phantasies, 
and  to  have  held  it  precariously  until  practical 
reason  had  caught  up  imagination,  and  said 
that  truth  was  stranger  than  fiction,  and  that 
Icarus  could  fly  in  broad  daylight  without 

56 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

having  his  wings  melted.  Many  of  the  great 
myths  of  the  world  are  an  attempt  to  satisfy 
the  longing  for  knowledge  on  things  that  are 
beyond  present  possible  experience — the  be- 
ginning and  the  end  of  all  things,  or  the  origin 
of  evil.  And  there  are  ethical  and  social  ideals, 
which  can  be  seen  to  be  true  to  the  principles 
of  human  development,  and  yet  appear  so  far 
remote  from  present  experience  that,  until 
they  can  be  embodied  and  expressed,  they  re- 
main almost  in  the  realm  of  phantasy.  Adult 
life  is  the  antithesis  of  the  nursery  in  many 
respects,  but  it  resembles  it  in  this:  that  it  is 
still  a  narrow  territory  of  familiar  things  on 
the  edge  of  a  great  expanse  of  unknown  coun- 
try. The  phantasy  tendency,  therefore,  in  so 
far  as  it  is  the  impulse  of  discovery  and  as- 
piration, is  part  of  the  equipment  of  the 
grown-up  no  less  than  of  the  child.  Pro- 
gressive phantasy  is  an  essential  pre-occupa- 
tion  with  those  who  are  seeking  to  "poise  the 
world  upon  a  distant  centre." 

It  is  easy  to  generalize  upon  the  idea  that 
dreaming  and  doing  are  not  necessarily  op- 
posed; but  it  is  necessary  also  to  have  some 
standard  of  the  right  and  wrong  exercise  of 
phantasy.  No  doubt  this  raises  the  metaphys- 
ical problem:  "What  is  Reality?  "  but,  pend- 
ing the  solution  of  this  problem,  one  may  sug- 
57 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

gest  certain  comparatively  simple  pragmatic 
tests.  The  value  of  the  phantasy  tendency  de- 
pends, first,  on  the  closeness  of  its  relation  to 
actual  life.  For  example,  a  youth  who  is  on 
active  service  may  have  his  mind  full  of  a 
V.C.  phantasy;  and  this  may  have  a  very  stim- 
ulating effect  on  his  immediate  conduct.  But 
the  same  phantasy,  obsessing  the  mind  of  his 
small  brother  at  school,  may  hinder,  rather 
than  help,  him  in  his  efforts  to  master  the 
binomial  problem  for  the  purposes  of  Wool- 
wich entrance. 

Another  test  is  to  be  found  in  the  distinc- 
tion between  progressive  and  regressive  phan- 
tasy. The  child's  dreams  and  imaginings  may 
seem  absurdly  remote  from  his  present  exist- 
ence, and  yet  have  a  bearing  upon  his  future. 
The  adult's  phantasies  are  likely  to  be  directed 
to  the  past.  Sometimes  it  is  his  own  actual  past 
that  he  dwells  upon  and  idealizes,  until  "it 
would  seem  that  the  recollection  of  his  youth 
is  more  precious  to  him  than  any  present 
joys."  *  Sometimes  it  is  the  return  in  imagina- 
tion to  a  condition  which  should  be  psycho- 
logically past,  since  it  belongs  to  an  earlier 
phase  of  development.  "It  is  ever  so  in  life, 
when  we  draw  back  before  too  great  an  ob- 

1  Analytical  Psychology,  by  Dr.  C.  G.  Jung,  Baillierc, 
Tindall  &  Cox,  1917.  p.  164. 

58 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

stacle — the  menace  of  some  severe  disappoint- 
ment, or  the  risk  of  some  far-reaching  decision 
— the  energy  stored  up  for  the  solution  of  the 
task  flows  back  impotent;  the  by-streams  once 
relinquished  as  inadequate  are  again  filled 
up."1  The  conception  of  regression  is  of  im- 
mense importance  in  the  understanding  and 
treatment  of  mental  and  nervous  disorders; 
and  the  retreat  into  phantasy  is  one  of  its  char- 
acteristic phenomena. 

There  is  a  third  aspect  of  phantasy:  that 
which  includes  all  invention,  all  art,  and  every 
work  of  the  creative  imagination.  This  is  un- 
questionably to  be  encouraged  in  the  child. 
It  is  good  that  he  should  draw,  plan,  devise, 
and  make  anything  and  everything,  and  that 
he  should  explore  the  ways  of  self-expression. 
In  the  adolescent  and  the  adult  a  more  rigid 
standard  needs  to  be  applied.  There  are 
many  products  of  phantasy  which  their  au- 
thors would  fain  justify  as  "creative,"  which 
are,  in  reality,  mainly  compensatory:  stories, 
for  example,  in  which  the  hero  seeks  satisfac- 
tion for  his  own  disappointments  by  identify- 
ing himself  with  the  achievements  of  the  hero. 
And  there  is  much  "self-expression"  which 
is  of  no  conceivable  value  to  the  community. 
The  schoolboy  who  writes  sonnets  in  pref- 

*Ibid.,  p.  156. 

59 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

erence  to  doing  his  trigonometry  may,  of 
course,  be  a  potential  Rupert  Brooke:  but  he 
may  be  simply  a  young  slacker.  Education  in 
the  past  has  not  been  free  from  the  reproach 
of  rigidity  and  inability  to  apply  exceptional 
methods  to  exceptional  individuals;  and  we 
are  therefore  likely  to  be  influenced  to-day 
by  a  bias  in  the  opposite  direction.  We  are 
inclined  to  believe  in  self-expression  as  a  thing 
that  is  necessarily  valuable,  and  to  be  encour- 
aged without  discrimination.  This  view  is 
obviously  incomplete  without  the  reservation 
that  there  are  times,  and  perhaps  many  times, 
when  the  young  person — much  more  the  ado- 
lescent than  the  child — must,  for  the  good  of 
society  and  of  his  own  soul,  leave  self-expres- 
sion aside  for  the  moment,  and  learn  self-dis- 
cipline. The  discussion  of  the  social  value  of 
creative  phantasy  raises  many  issues  which 
lie  beyond  the  realm  of  psychology,  and  there- 
fore beyond  the  scope  of  this  book. 

Hitherto  we  have  been  chiefly  considering 
the  phantasy  tendency  in  the  individual:  the 
same  mental  mechanism  can  be  seen  at  work 
in  the  community.  Reference  has  already 
been  made  to  the  element  of  phantasy  in 
Christian  Science:  the  refusal  to  admit  the 
reality  of  pain.  We  may  attach  a  high  value 
to  this  belief;  but  it  is  none  the  less  important 
60 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

to  recognize  the  nature  of  the  psychological 
process  involved.  Social  phantasy  comes  to 
the  normal  individual  with  a  far  greater  au- 
thority than  is  attached  to  his  own  private 
phantasies.  He  is  inclined  to  believe  that 
reality  is  something  "objective";  and  that  the 
test  of  a  thing's  objectivity  is  that  other  people 
should  experience  it  too.  He  makes  due  al- 
lowance for  his  own  capacity  for  illusion;  but 
when  large  numbers  of  other  people  accept  a 
theory  it  becomes  something  outside  himself, 
and  carries  the  credential  of  "objectivity."  It 
may  be  remembered  that  there  was  once  a  con- 
troversy among  the  evening  newspapers  as  to 
which  had  the  largest  circulation.  It  was  car- 
ried on  with  great  intensity  and  warmth :  chal- 
lenges were  flung  down;  claims  were  made; 
statistics  were  demanded.  The  Press  is  al- 
ways a  good  field  for  observing  the  play  of 
primitive  instincts;  and  the  emotional  re- 
sponse to  this  stimulus  was  no  doubt  related 
to  the  instincts  of  self-preservation.  But  the 
particular  importance  of  the  question  of  cir- 
culation was  not  merely  one  of  numbers  but 
of  authority.  Social  phantasy — rumour — is 
part  of  the  legitimate  stock-in-trade  of  the 
evening  newspapers  (seeing  that  it  can  always 
be  contradicted  in  the  morning)  ;  and  the  more 
people  there  are  reading  the  rumour  the  more 
61 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

conviction  it  carries  to  each  one.  A  special 
sanctity  is  attached  to  anything  that  is  read 
by  more  than  a  million  people  on  one  day. 

If  the  social  phantasy  is  to  commend  itself 
to  belief,  it  has  to  pass  another  of  the  tests 
of  reality  which  we  commonly  employ:  it  has 
to  appear  in  some  sort  of  harmony  with  the 
rest  of  experience.  All  rumour  is  intimately 
related  to  experience;  but  it  is  the  kind  of 
relation  which  existed  between  the  extrava- 
gant phantasy  of  the  schoolboy  and  the  reali- 
ties of  his  life  at  school.  If  we  were  to  apply 
the  test  rigidly  and  impartially,  there  would 
be  many  rumours  that  could  never  pass 
through  the  gate.  As  it  is,  they  fly  over  it. 
Rumour  springs  from  a  need  that  confounds 
judgment:  "defeating  the  conscious  aim  to 
express  objective  truth  by  the  unconscious  aim 
to  express  subjective  emotion."  l  We  can  see 
this  mechanism  at  work  in  any  social  phan- 
tasy. It  is  clearly  illustrated  in  the  most 
striking  example  of  our  own  times — the  Rus- 
sian rumour  of  September,  1914.  It  stands 
out  as  evidence  of  the  tragic  and  pathetic  need 
that  was  felt  in  those  days.  We  were  up 
against  a  reality  more  terrible  and  menacing 
than  any  we  had  known,  and  we  took  refuge 

1  M.  K.  Bradby :  The  Logic  of  the  Unconscious  Mind, 
Oxford  Medical  Publications,  p.  60. 
62 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

from  it  in  a  great  phantasy  of  deliverance,  for 
which  there  was  not  a  single  scrap  of  veri- 
fiable evidence. 

Some  of  the  most  vivid  and  intense  forms  of 
social  phantasy  are  of  the  compensatory  type; 
butexamples  of  the  other  types  will  also  occur 
to  the  reader.  The  idea  of  the  League  of 
Nations  has  long  been  in  the  world  as  an  in- 
spiratory  phantasy.  To-day,  though  it  has  a 
local  habitation  and  a  Covenant,  its  friends  as 
well  as  its  enemies  protest  that  "it  is  a  mere 
ghost  that  walks  the  earth."  Whether  or  no 
one  believes  in  such  ghosts,  and  in  the  power 
of  things  that  are  not  to  bring  to  naught  things 
that  are,  must  depend  upon  one's  view  of  the 
nature  of  reality. 

This  discussion  of  phantasy  must  be  related 
to  the  general  view  of  the  educationalist  on 
the  advisability  of  "developing  the  child's 
imagination."  There  is  some  difference  of 
opinion  on  this  point.  Dr.  Montessori  has 
assumed  a  somewhat  uncompromising  attitude 
with  regard  to  the  fairy  tale,  and  its  place 
in  education;  and  her  attitude  has  been  sub- 
jected to  a  good  deal  of  criticism.  There  is 
probably  an  element  of  truth  in  the  objection 
that  Dr.  Montessori  comes  from  a  Latin  race, 
and  does  not  fully  appreciate  the  value  of 
folk-lore  to  a  Saxon,  Teutonic  or  Scandina- 

63 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

vian  people.  It  is  certainly  true  that  as  Chris- 
tianity dominated  the  Latin  races  first,  it  sup- 
pressed to  a  great  extent  the  evolution  of  folk- 
lore in  its  original  form;  so  that  these  races 
are  much  poorer  in  legend  and  myth  than  the 
more  Northern  races.  The  racial  phantasy 
was  largely  absorbed  in  religious  allegory  and 
hagiology.  It  may  also  be  said  that  the  North- 
ern races  have,  on  the  whole,  less  facility  for 
self-expression;  and,  therefore,  more  emphasis 
is  needed  in  their  education  on  all  that  tends 
to  encourage  it.  But,  with  these  reservations, 
one  must  accept  the  large  measure  of  truth  in 
Dr.  Montessori's  position.  Her  objection  is, 
no  doubt,  based  partly  on  the  worthlessness, 
fatuity  or  harmfulness  of  many  of  the  fairy 
stories  in  currency.  There  is  need  for  a  pro- 
test against  the  mere  shibboleth  of  "develop- 
ing the  child's  imagination."  The  phantasy 
tendency  is  inherent  in  every  child;  but  its 
development  is  not  necessarily  valuable.  The 
policy  of  "developing  the  imagination"  may 
produce  an  Edison  or  a  hypochondriac.  Every 
form  of  stimulus  to  the  imagination,  whether 
it  be  the  kinema,  or  phantasy,  or  fairy  tales, 
needs  to  be  judged  on  its  own  merits.  The 
value  or  the  harm  of  it  entirely  depends  on 
the  kind  of  picture  the  child  sees,  and  the  kind 
of  story  he  hears  or  makes  up  for  himself. 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

No  one  can  doubt  that  fairy  tales,  myths  and 
allegories  serve  the  purpose  of  objectifying 
the  abstract,  so  as  to  bring  it  within  the  grasp 
of  the  child :  he  must  pass  thus  from  the  seen 
to  the  unseen,  from  the  known  to  the  unknown. 
They  are  invaluable  forms  of  expression;  but  ' 
what  is  it  that  they  express?  And  how  much 
of  this  meaning  does  the  child  understand? 

The  story  of  Little  Red  Riding-hood  is  a 
very  interesting  one  from  the  point  of  view  of 
racial  psychology.  It  appears  in  the  folk-lore 
of  every  country  from  Persia  to  Norway,  and 
it  contains  a  deep  psychological  truth.  Its 
theme  is  the  age-long  story  of  the  conflict 
between  the  aspiring  child  and  the  doomed 
adult;  between  confident  vision  and  consum- 
ing jealousy.  All  that  the  old  grandmother 
stood  for  of  love  and  devotion  has  been  con- 
sumed in  the  bitterness  of  becoming  a  "back 
number."  Then  there  is  a  magical  interven- 
tion :  the  man  appears  and  saves  the  girl.  Most 
of  us  have  known  the  girl  confronted  with  this 
danger,  and  we  have  seen  that  sometimes  the 
man  does  appear  and  save  her,  and  that  some- 
times he  does  not,  and  she  is  destroyed  by  the 
fierceness  of  bitter  and  exacting  age.  It  is  a 
story  full  of  meaning;  but  is  it  a  meaning  that 
we  wish  the  child  to  appropriate,  consciously 
or  unconsciously?  Do  we  want  the  child  to 

65 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

believe  that  willing  devotion  to  duty  is  likely 
to  lead  into  such  dire  danger?  Do  we  want  to 
add  a  wolf  to  the  fear-concepts  of  children 
who  have  quite  enough  to  supply  that  element 
when  they  deal  with  dogs  and  motor-buses? 
Do  we  want  them  to  believe  in  the  certainty 
of  magical  and  effortless  salvation?  And  if 
the  real  meaning  of  the  story  is  missed,  both 
by  the  teacher  and  the  child,  is  there  any  value 
in  it,  as  a  mere  stimulus  to  imagination? 

The  same  indiscriminate  belief  in  the  value 
of  a  story  leads  many  people  to  teach  children 
parables  and  incidents  from  the  Bible  without 
adequate  understanding  of  their  meaning. 
The  story  of  Legion  and  the  destruction  of  the 
Gadarene  swine  has  been  related  to  children 
by  parents  and  teachers  who  were  unable  to 
show  in  it  any  sort  of  message,  or  even  to 
bring  it  into  line  with  the  most  ordinary  code 
of  ethics. 

The  legend  of  St.  Christopher  is  an  example 
of  a  story  that  is  entirely  valuable.  There  is 
nothing  ugly  in  it.  The  magic  part  is  no 
effortless  salvation,  but  a  truth  that  is  truer 
than  any — a  truth  that  the  child  may  not  be 
ready  to  apprehend,  but  that  he  will  realize 
in  after  years,  when,  after  self-forgetful  devo- 
tion to  the  service  of  his  fellow-men,  he  finds 
the  load  becoming  intolerably  heavy;  and  the 
66 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

wakens  to  the  fact  that  that  load  is  the  Christ 
and  none  other. 

Let  us  give  the  children  Arthurian  legends, 
stories  of  Drake  and  Raleigh,  Livingstone  and 
Stanley,  Shackleton  and  Scott — stories  that  are 
full  of  hard-earned  achievement,  the  glory  of 
service,  and  the  triumph  over  circumstances. 
And  Jet  us  taboo  all  fairy  tales  dealing  with 
the  conflict  between  old  and  young;  all  that 
represent  life  and  progress  as  unduly  exacting 
or  menacing;  all  that  end  up  with  effortless 
and  magical  solutions,  and  all  that  deal  with 
punishment  and  vengeance. 

So  much  may  be  said  of  the  stimulation  of 
phantasy  from  without.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered, however,  that  although  we  may  guard 
all  the  outward  gates  of  the  child's  mind,  and 
submit  all  incoming  phantasy-material  to  a 
careful  inspection,  there  is  one  line  of  com- 
munication which  defies  our  vigilance;  for 
it  leads  from  the  depths  of  the  unconscious. 
The  myths  and  symbols  that  belong  to  the 
racial  unconscious  emerge  thence  in  dreams 
and  day-dreams.  Dr.  Maurice  Nicoll  has 
pointed  out  the  impossibility  of  protecting  the 
child's  mind  from  all  images  of  terror  and 
nightmare :  "The  goblins  of  the  night  spring 
out  of  the  sleeping  senses  themselves  as  ap- 
paritions older  than  the  waking  mind,  as 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

haunters  older  than  the  haunted.  They  lie  in 
the  psyche  itself.  They  are,  as  Lamb  has 
called  them,  transcripts,  types,  whose  arche- 
types are  in  us,  and  eternal."  * 

1  Dream  Psychology,  by  Maurice  Nicoll.  Oxford 
Medical  Publications,  1917.  p.  4. 

This  conception,  which  is  based  on  Jung's  theory  of 
the  collective  unconscious,  explains  the  common  basis  of 
symbolism  which  can  be  traced  in  dreams,  and  cannot 
be  traced  to  any  common  source  in  consciousness.  It 
also  explains  the  powerful  appeal  which  fairy  stories 
make  to  the  mind — an  appeal  which  obviously  is  inde- 
pendent of  the  relation  of  the  story  to  reason  or 
experience. 

In  the  light  of  this  theory  it  is  possible  to  recognize  in 
the  myth-making  tendency  of  the  child  traces  of  a  certain 
stage  in  the  historical  process  of  the  psychological  evolu- 
tion of  the  race.  In  a  recent  account  of  Jung's  teaching 
the  process  of  man's  adaptation  to  the  two  worlds  of 
"subjective"  and  "objective"  reality  has  been  traced 
through  three  main  stages.  (Vide  "Some  Analytical  In- 
terpretations," by  Maurice  Nicoll,  Journal  of  Neurology 
and  Psychopathology,  May,  1921,  Vol.  n,  No.  5,  p.  26  f., 
from  which  the  quotations  that  follow  are  taken.)  In 
the  first  and  most  primitive  stage  they  are  not  distin- 
guished; the  content  of  the  collective  unconscious  is  pro- 
jected into  the  object,  which  becomes  thereby  endowed 
with  mysterious  significance.  "What  is  really  subjective 
is  not  detached  from  what  is  objective.  As  long  as  this 
state  persists  there  is  participation  mystique  with  the  ob- 
ject. The  object  becomes  endowed  with  demoniacal  or 
God-like  qualities,  and  is  feared  or  worshipped  accord- 
ingly. The  whole  world  trembles  with  magic."  This 

68 


Reality  and  Phantasy 

One  of  the  greatest  truths  on  the  subject  of 
phantasy  is  conveyed  in  the  phantasy  of  Peter 
Pan.  How  far  is  it  apprehended  by  the  adults 
who  take  children  to  that  play?  It  is  that 
every  single  child  has  to  go  through  the 

stage  is  easily  recognizable  in  the  development  of  the  child : 
and  indeed  most  people  can  remember  the  time  when 
there  was  still  for  them  participation  mystique  with  some 
feared  or  cherished  object.  In  the  next  stage  of  psycho- 
logical evolution,  the  collective  unconscious  begins  to  be 
detached  from  the  objects  which  it  once  animated,  and  a 
partially  distinct  world  of  myth  and  symbol  comes  into 
being.  "We  must  understand  mythology  historically,  as 
a  means  whereby  man  set  apart  the  content  of  the  col- 
lective unconscious,  and  came  into  a  truer  relationship  to 
the  real  object.  By  this  means  he  first  divided  the  world 
of  psychological  realities  from  the  world  of  the  objective 
realities"  We  are  not  concerned  here  to  follow  the 
process  to  the  further  stage  of  still  more  thorough 
differentiation,  and  more  adequate  adjustment  both  to 
the  collective  unconscious  and  to  the  external  world. 
It  is  the  second  stage  that  provides  the  parallel  to  the 
period  in  childhood  in  which  myths  and  fairy  tales  count 
for  most.  We  need  to  include  in  our  conception  of  the 
function  of  phantasy  this  view  of  it  as  an  attempt  to 
distinguish  the  two  worlds  which  we  describe  unsatis- 
factorily, but  recognizably,  as  "subjective"  and  "ob- 
jective." It  is  a  temporary  adjustment,  and  on  its  nega- 
tive side,  as  an  escape  from  reality,  it  has  to  be  dis- 
carded. On  the  positive  side,  it  represents  the  dawning 
apprehension  of  a  world  of  psychological  reality,  to  which 
the  individual  has  to  learn  to  make  a  more  and  adequate 
adjustment. 

69 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

temptation  of  Peter  Pan :  that  the  determina- 
tion to  retreat  from  reality  and  escape  into 
phantasy  and  to  live  in  a  world  of  dreams  is 
always  near  the  child  in  adolescence;  and  that 
if  he  goes  too  far,  he  is  unable  to  get  back. 
This  was  the  fate  of  Peter  Pan,  and  of  the  boy 
who  wrote  the  letter  quoted  at  the  beginning 
of  this  chapter.  Peter  Pan  could  not  get 
back,  even  when  he  had  his  final  chance :  the 
girl,  offering  herself  to  him. 

If  reality  is  made  too  harsh  and  uncom- 
promising, too  difficult  and  menacing  for  the 
child,  one  of  two  things  must  happen :  either 
he  will  escape  into  phantasy,  as  Peter  Pan  did ; 
or  he  will  become  a  materialist  to  whom  ideal- 
ism makes  no  appeal.  The  two  reactions  are 
strictly  analogous  to  the  two  reactions  to  au- 
thority discussed  in  the  previous  chapter.  If 
authority  is  made  too  hard,  the  child  becomes 
ultra-suggestible,  or  a  rebel ;  if  reality  is  made 
too  hard,  then  the  child  yields  to  it,  in  a  way 
that  is  comparable  to  the  action  of  the  ultra- 
suggestible;  or  else  he  resists  it,  and  becomes 
the  materialist,  comparable  to  the  rebel. 


70 


CHAPTER  IV 

EMOTIONAL  DEVELOPMENT: 
THE  BOY 


THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  STANDPOINT: 

Psychology  must  be  harmonized  with  it. 
The  freedom  of  the  individual  and  its  limita- 
tions. 

THE  EVOLUTIONARY  STANDPOINT: 

Educating  the  child  for  parenthood. 

THE  GOAL  OF  DEVELOPMENT: 
The  three  adjustments. 
Contrasts  in  the  process  of  development. 

THE  ROTATION  OF  PHASES  IN  THE  BOY: 

DEVELOPMENT  ARRESTED  BY  THE  MOTHER: 
Dreams  and  examples. 

DEVELOPMENT  ARRESTED  BY  THE  FATHER: 
Dreams  and  examples. 

PARSIFAL  MYTH,  AS  ILLUSTRATING  EMOTIONAL  DEVEL- 
OPMENT. 


EMOTIONAL  DEVELOPMENT: 
THE  BOY 

TN  discussing  the  psychology  of  the  child's 
-"•  development,  it  is  essential  to  adopt  a 
sociological  standpoint.  The  new  psychology 
has  come  in  with  a  great  protest  against  the 
crushing  of  individuality,  the  repression  of 
childish  and  adolescent  impulse,  which  was 
so  characteristic  of  the  Victorian  age.  In  so 
doing,  it  has  been  inclined  to  swing  too  far 
in  the  opposite  direction.  There  are  schools 
of  psycho-analysis  to-day  which  appear  to 
make  the  development  of  the  individual  the 
be-all  and  end-all  of  their  work.  But  it  is 
plain  that  any  new  addition  to  knowledge  must 
correlate  itself  with  other  departments  of 
human  understanding  and  endeavour;  and  if 
the  new  psychology  is  to  stand  alone,  if  it  can- 
not be  related  to  modern  sociology  and  to  mod- 
ern religious  views,  it  has  evaded  an  impor- 
tant test  of  value,  and  it  may  fail  to  be  of 
real  service.  It  is  therefore  not  possible  to 
discuss  the  emotional  development  of  the  child 
and  of  the  adolescent  from  the  point  of  view 
73 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

of  the  child  and  the  adolescent  alone.  A  psy- 
cho-analyst who  accepted  the  extreme  indi- 
vidualist view,  when  confronted  with  the  case 
of  a  confirmed  pickpocket,  was  reduced  to 
maintaining  that  the  man  had  got  to  realize 
himself  as  a  pickpocket,  and  that  it  was  the 
fault  of  society  that  he  had  come  to  that  point. 
He  was  prepared  to  disregard  the  general  in- 
terests of  society.  The  person  who  hustles  on 
to  a  'bus,  and  meets  the  descending  stream  of 
passengers  halfway  down  the  steps,  asserts 
his  independence  of  the  conductor's  order  at 
the  expense  of  the  liberty  of  his  fellow-crea- 
tures, and  his4  expression  of  individuality  is 
devoid  of  any  social  value.  In  so  far  as  psy- 
chology appears  to  defend  an  ideal  of  self- 
realization  which  underestimates  the  claims 
of  the  community,  in  so  far  does  it  weaken  the 
effectiveness  of  its  true  demand  for  liberty,  by 
making  an  exaggerated  claim.  The  student 
of  analytical  psychology  will  often  enough 
find  himself  called  upon  to  defend  the  cause 
of  freedom :  the  freedom  of  the  child  to  grow 
up  and — it  may  be — to  develop  views  that 
are  entirely  opposed  to  those  of  his  parents; 
freedom  from  emotional  domination  and  the 
tyranny  of  unwise  affection;  freedom  of  the 
individual  judgment  to  find  its  own  standard 
of  values  from  the  mass  of  collective  opinion. 
74 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 

In  all  these  ways,  and  many  more,  he  will  find 
himself  sincerely  and  urgently  on  the  side  of 
freedom.  But  he  will  not  strengthen  his  posi- 
tion by  using  the  appeal  to  liberty  indiscrim- 
inately. There  are  people  who  cut  their  way 
through  many  intricate  problems  on  these 
lines.  The  case  for  divorce  is  quite  simple  to 
them,  because  marriage  so  often  presents  "the 
tragic  spectacle  of  two  people  yoked  together 
who  cannot  develop  their  own  individuality." 
It  does  not  occur  to  them  that  this  tragic  spec- 
tacle may  perhaps  have  to  be  endured  and  per- 
petuated, because  the  individual  is  of  less  ac- 
count than  society;  and  because  two  people 
who  have  perpetrated  the  huge  blunder  of 
getting  married  to  each  other  must  endure  the 
dreary  results  for  the  sake  of  what  the  mar- 
riage tie  means  to  society,  and  for  the  sake  of 
what  parenthood  means  to  the  next  generation. 
Therefore,  in  discussing  the  development  of 
the  child,  it  will  be  assumed  that  freedom  im- 
poses its  own  limitations,  and  that  the  freedom 
of  the  individual  has  to  be  restrained  when  it 
begins  to  infringe  the  freedom  of  other  people. 
It  is  also  necessary  to  adopt  the  evolutionary 
standpoint,  accepting  it  in  its  simplest  and 
most  indisputable  form  as  the  conviction  that 
the  next  generation  matters  more  than  the 
present  generation.  Its  obvious  corollary  is 
75 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

that  in  the  development  of  the  child  we  arc 
thinking  of  him,  not  only  as  a  possible  citizen, 
but  as  something  more  important:  a  possible 
parent.  We  are  not  only  concerned  that  when 
he  has  a  vote,  he  should  be  able  to  go  to  the 
poll,  and  vote  reasonably  in  the  interests  of 
his  own  generation ;  but  that  he  should  vote  in 
a  way  that  is  right  for  the  generation  beyond. 
It  may  be  suspected  that  this  is  ultimately  a 
mere  biological  maxim — something  that  is 
concerned  with  "life"  (TO  £fjv)  rather  than 
"the  right  kind  of  life"  (TO  eij  £fjv) ;  but  the 
evolutionary  standpoint  implies  here  a  value 
in  quality  as  well  as  in  survival.  A  man's 
judgment  in  matters  of  citizenship,  education 
and  religion  is  normally  at  its  best  when  he  is 
considering  the  interests  of  his  children. 

We  are  left  with  certain  indications  of  the 
goal  of  individual  development.  The  child 
has  to  grow  up,  and  to  make  the  three  princi- 
pal adjustments  which  are  demanded  of  the 
complete  human  being.  He  has  to  make  the 
adjustment  to  society:  to  pass  from  the  self- 
centred  isolation  of  infancy  to  full  com- 
munion with  his  fellow-creatures.  The  human 
species  is  gregarious;  and  if  the  individual 
fails  to  make  his  adjustment  to  the  herd,  his 
life  is  incomplete,  and  his  character  is  not 
fully  developed.  Secondly,  he  has  to  make  the 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 

adjustment  to  the  potential  mate.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  character-development,  it 
matters  relatively  little  whether  the  boy  or  girl 
ultimately  marries;  but  it  matters  intensely 
whether  he  or  she  is  psychologically  adjusted 
to  the  potential  mate  and  to  the  conception  of 
parenthood.  The  third  adjustment  which  has 
to  be  made  is  the  adjustment  to  the  Infinite. 
It  is  useless  for  a  person  to  consider  himself 
an  adult  while  he  is  still  pretending  to  himself 
and  to  the  world  that  he  does  not  know 
whether  there  is  a  God,  and  is  indifferent  on 
the  subject.  He  is  far  from  maturity  if  he  does 
not  know  himself  well  enough  to  realize  that 
he  has  got  to  settle  in  his  mind  his  own  view 
of  the  Infinite,  and  to  adjust  himself  to  it. 
Nor  is  his  adjustment  adequately  made  if  he 
carries  through  life  a  conception  founded 
primarily  on  childish  experience :  the  concep- 
tion of  a  God  who  is  identified  either  with  the 
severity  or  with  the  indulgence  of  his  parents. 
In  making  these  three  adjustments,  the  child 
is  involved  in  a  series  of  complete  transitions. 
He  begins  life  entirely  dependent,  ego-centric, 
irresponsible;  he  should  become  fully  inde- 
pendent, altruistic,  responsible.  He  has  to 
pass  from  the  completely  filial  to  the  com- 
pletely parental  attitude.  From  being  the  vic- 
tim of  circumstance  and  environment,  help- 
77 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

less  in  the  face  of  these  two  factors,  he  should 
end  by  being  independent  of  both,  and  the 
captain  of  his  own  soul.  Lastly,  from  being 
first  unconscious,  and  then  more  and  more 
conscious  of  himself  as  a  centre  of  attraction, 
he  should  attain  to  the  completely  adult  atti- 
tude which  includes  the  readiness  to  be  ig- 
nored. These  are  drastic  changes:  and  we 
have  seen  how  the  two  mechanisms  of  sug- 
gestibility and  phantasy  are  needed  to  ease 
the  process  of  transition.  It  remains  to  con- 
sider the  successive  phases  of  growth  which 
can  be  distinguished  in  the  girl  and  the  boy. 
The  determining  factor  in  these  phases  is 
the  dominant  emotional  interest;  it  will  not 
be  the  exclusive  interest,  but  psychologically 
it  is  the  dominant  interest  that  counts.  The 
rotation  of  these  phases  in  the  boy's  emotional 
development  is  represented  on  the  diagram: 
which  shows  also  the  approximate  ages  at 
which  they  occur.  It  cannot  be  too  clearly 
stated  that  the  ages  shown  are  only  an  average, 
and  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  individual 
variation.  The  child  begins  by  being  purely 
ego-centric;  but  within  a  short  time  his  in- 
terest begins  to  flow  out  towards  his  mother. 
She  becomes  first  the  sole,  and  then  the  dom- 
inant emotional  factor  in  his  life,  and  he  associ- 
ates her  with  ideas  of  nourishment,  comfort, 

78 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 


consolation,  and  protection.  This  relationship 
to  her  shows  all  those  characteristics  which 
were  enumerated  as  belonging  tothechildish  at- 
titude :  it  is  a  relation  of  complete  dependence, 
irresponsibility,  and  the  rest.  At  about  the 

I  Mother 

0-8 


JS 


HETERO  SEXUAL 


18  — 


ffl  School fe/Jom 
12-18 


age  of  seven,  eight,  or  nine,  interest  begins  to 
be  transferred  to  the  father.  The  dawning  of 
this  phase  is  seen  in  the  familiar  phrases  of  the 
small  boy:  "When  I  am  a  big  man,  I'm  going 
to  have  a  big  stick  like  Daddy.  .  .  ."  What- 
ever symbol  the  child  uses,  the  main  idea  is 
79 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

the  same.  This  emulation  of  his  father  is  the 
very  first  step  that  the  child  takes  in  passing 
out  of  the  phase  of  complete  dependence.  It 
is  only  a  step  in  phantasy  so  far ;  but  it  is  very 
significant,  and  during  these  four  years  or  so 
the  relative  influences  of  the  father  and  the 
mother  are  intensely  important  and  formative. 
The  boy  at  this  stage  should  normally  be  hero- 
worshipping  his  father,  and  should  be  a  good 
deal  formed  by  his  example. 

After  this  follows  the  school  age — from 
twelve  to  eighteen.  Actually,  it  is  only  the 
school  age  for  a  limited  number  of  boys. 
There  are  some  who  go  to  a  boarding  school 
at  seven  and  a  half,  and  there  is  the  vast 
majority  whose  school  career  is  completely 
over  at  fourteen  or  sixteen.  Psychologically, 
however,  it  is  the  ideal  school  age  for  all  boys; 
and  the  development  of  the  normal  public 
school  boy  can  be  examined  as  a  typical  ex- 
ample. 

When  a  boy  first  goes  to  school,  the  imme- 
diate reaction  of  his  mind  to  a  strange  and 
rather  hostile  environment  is  to  look  for  a 
father-substitute:  some  one  to  whom  he  can 
stand  in  the  same  relation  of  emulation  and 
dependence  as  he  stood  to  his  father.  He  may 
find  it  in  one  of  the  masters,  or  in  the  captain 
of  the  fifteen,  or  in  a  prefect.  He  may  be 
80 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 

conscious  of  the  protection  of  an  older  boy; 
and  he  will  also  think  to  himself :  "When  I 
am  as  old  as  Jones  Major,  I  hope  I'll  be  in  the 
Eleven."  It  is  phantasy  still,  but  he  has  made 
a  tremendous  advance.  When  the  hero  was 
his  father,  the  phantasy  was  perhaps  thirty 
years  ahead  of  him;  when  it  is  Jones  Major, 
it  is  only  five  or  six  years  ahead.  His  phan- 
tasy has  come  very  much  nearer  to  reality. 

This  period  of  the  boy's  life  falls  roughly 
into  three  different  sections,  as  he  passes 
through  the  lower,  middle,  and  upper  school. 
In  the  lower  school  the  boy  is  still  having  a 
considerable  share  of  protection.  He  is  a 
fag.  His  prefect  and  other  prefects  have  a 
certain  responsibility  for  him;  his  master  is 
aware  that  nothing  must  happen  to  boys  as 
small  as  this;  public  opinion  demands  that  he 
shall  not  be  unduly  maltreated.  He  is  still  in 
a  position  of  dependence. 

The  middle-school  period  is  the  most  crit- 
ical and  serious.  The  age  coincides  with  the 
chief  crisis  of  his  biological  development; 
and  he  is  passing  through  the  most  difficult 
phase  of  transition  to  independence.  He 
is  no  longer  under  protection.  He  must  learn 
now  to  stand  on  his  own  feet.  At  the 
same  time,  he  has  not  much  scope  for  asser- 
tion. He  is  between  the  upper  and  the  nether 
81 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

millstone :  there  is  neither  the  position  of  hero- 
worship  and  dependence,  nor  of  power  and 
responsibility.  Life  may  be  very  difficult  for 
him  at  this  stage. 

By  the  time  the  boy  reaches  the  upper  school 
age — from  sixteen  to  eighteen — he  should  be- 
gin to  feel  his  power;  and  it  is  the  genius  of 
our  public-school  system  that  power  is  imme- 
diately associated  with  responsibility.  It  may 
or  may  not  be  true  that  Waterloo  was  won 
upon  the  playing  fields  of  Eton :  but  it  appears 
indisputable  that  British  success  in  coloniza- 
tion and  in  the  guardianship  of  primitive 
peoples  is  the  direct  result  of  a  training  that 
from  the  first  harnesses  power  to  responsibil- 
ity. Other  nations  who  have  copied  the  Eng- 
lish public-school  system  have  almost  invari- 
ably drawn  the  line  at  this  point.  The  big 
boys  may  have  been  called  prefects  or  mon- 
itors: but  there  would  be  always  a  master 
looking  over  their  shoulders  to  see  that  the 
small  boys  were  not  sacrificed  to  their  injustice 
or  cruelty.  We  have  adopted  the  policy  of 
trusting  the  big  boy;  and  if  we  have  paid  the 
price  of  trust  in  sacrificing  the  well-being  and 
comfort  of  a  certain  number  of  small  boys,  we 
have  also  found  it  the  essential  condition  of 
developing  a  character  that  can  be  trusted 
with  power. 

82 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 

If  this  principle  is  accepted  as  true  and 
vitally  important,  it  is  a  sufficient  indictment 
of  a  social  and  educational  system  that  cuts  the 
majority  of  boys  adrift  from  school  at  the  age 
of  fourteen,  or  even  at  sixteen.  They  are 
bursting  with  power,  and  they  are  set  free  in 
a  position  of  minimum  responsibility.  The 
hiatus  between  the  time  of  leaving  school  and 
its  discipline,  and  the  time  of  taking  up  the 
responsibilities  of  marriage  and  of  adult  life 
is  responsible  for  the  great  problem  of  hooli- 
ganism, the  solution  of  which  is  left  to  various 
voluntary  associations,  such  as  the  Boy  Scout 
Movement.  It  is  very  little  use  trying  to  train 
boys  in  civics  before  they  are  sixteen;  and  it  is 
equally  little  use  to  attempt  it  after  they  are 
twenty-one,  and  have  married  and  settled 
down.  It  is  at  the  period  between  these  ages 
that  the  ideas  of  responsibility  have  to  be 
driven  home. 

Somewhere  about  the  age  of  seventeen  or 
eighteen  the  boy  normally  begins  to  be  aware 
of  those  biological  tendencies  which,  all 
through  the  animal  kingdom,  are  associated 
with  the  adornment  of  the  person.  If  he  can- 
not sing  like  the  nightingale,  he  can  at  least 
wear  resplendent  socks;  and  if  he  cannot  strut 
like  the  peacock,  he  can  purchase  more  bril- 
liantine :  and  these  things  he  does  to  commend 

83 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

himself  in  the  eyes  of  Robinson's  sister,  who  is 
coming  down  to  see  the  match.  This  is  per- 
fectly normal,  simple  and  desirable.  (There  is 
another  motive  for  personal  adornment  which 
is  less  wholesome:  the  autoerotic  motive 
known  as  Narcissism.  This  is  a  definite  psy- 
chological phenomenon :  but  it  is  no  part  of 
normal  development,  being  in  fact  a  regres- 
sion.) From  this  point  begins  the  boy's  in- 
terest in  the  potential  mate;  and  it  should  nor- 
mally lead  him  on  to  courtship,  love,  marriage 
and  parenthood. 

In  reviewing  the  four  phases,  it  is  plain 
that,  as  has  been  already  pointed  out,  they  con- 
stitute so  many  steps  in  the  transition  from 
dependence  to  independence.  The  second 
point  to  be  observed  is  that  the  boy's  relation 
to  the  female  sex  goes  through  a  complete 
transformation — from  dependence  upon  the 
mother  in  the  first  phase,  to  the  full  adult  re- 
sponsibility of  marriage  in  the  fourth.  It 
may  be  seen  from  the  diagram  that  between 
these  two  periods  of  psychological  hetero- 
sexuality,  there  lie  the  two  periods  of  psycho- 
logical homo-sexuality.  That  is  to  say  there 
is  a  period  of  roughly  ten  years  when  the  boy 
has  to  wander  in  a  kind  of  wilderness,  where 
no  woman  should  be  the  dominant  emotional 
factor  in  his  life.  There  are  many  mothers 


Emotional  Development:  The  Roy 

who  cannot  conceive  that  this  should  be  so; 
and  schoolmasters  of  insight  and  experience 
are  aware  of  the  peculiar  difficulties  that  they 
place  in  the  way  of  their  boys'  develop- 
ment. If  we  ask  why  it  is  that  the  emotional 
domination  of  the  mother  can  be  such  a 
paralysing  influence  in  a  boy's  life,  the  answer 
is  to  be  found  written  on  the  diagram:  it  is 
that  as  long  as  the  mother  is  holding  on  to  her 
original  relationship  to  the  boy,  it  is  impos- 
sible for  him  to  transform  his  attitude  towards 
the  other  sex.  He  cannot  grow  up.  It  is 
only  by  the  self-extinction  of  the  mother  dur- 
ing these  years  that  he  can  have  full  oppor- 
tunity to  develop. 

This  is  a  hard  saying:  and  it  appears  to  dis- 
credit a  thing  that  is  often  admired  in  a 
schoolboy — his  chivalry  towards  his  mother. 
The  fact  remains  that,  however  much  we  may 
appreciate  this  quality  socially,  it  often  covers 
a  confused  attitude  towards  the  other  sex, 
which  is  anything  but  helpful  to  the  boy. 
Once  he  has  passed  on  to  the  fourth  phase,  and 
completed  his  rotation  of  development,  there 
is  no  chivalry,  no  attention  he  can  pay  to  his 
mother,  which  is  anything  but  admirable;  but 
during  the  intermediate  phases,  they  must  not 
be  interpreted  in  too  high  or  idealistic  a  sense. 
Schoolmasters,  who  are  trying  to  stimulate  a 

85 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

boy  to  moral  effort,  sometimes  use  his  devo- 
tion to  his  mother  as  an  emotional  lever.  The 
result  may  appear  to  be  successful,  but  the 
method  is  dangerous.  From  the  years  of 
eight  to  eighteen,  approximately,  every  emo- 
tional appeal  must  be  based  on  the  claim  of 
growth,  progress,  virility.  Work  on  the 
schoolboy's  idealism  of  manhood;  challenge 
him  to  "vindicate  himself  under  heaven  as  a 
God-made  man" — but  not  as  a  worthy  little 
son  of  his  demonstrative  mother. 

The  writer  has  had  the  doubtful  privilege 
of  dealing  with  the  dreams  and  the  inner 
mental  life  of  a  number  of  boys  who  pass  as 
normal,  but  whose  development  had  been 
hindered  at  this  point.  They  were  particu- 
larly devoted  to  their  mothers,  and  they  had 
never  fallen  in  love — two  facts  which  had 
never  been  correlated,  but  which  were  shown 
to  be  completely  interdependent.  In  one  case 
the  boy  was  very  far  from  being  a  boy  in 
years:  he  is  now  thirty-six,  and  he  is  still  un- 
married, and  living  with  his  wealthy  and 
adoring  mother.  It  is  of  course  not  only  the 
mother  who  may  hinder  the  boy's  develop- 
ment. The  father  may  fail  to  inspire  him, 
and  may  alienate  his  sympathies,  so  that  he 
is  driven  to  identify  himself  with  the  mother, 
and  turns  away  from  the  masculine  ideal.  In 
86 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 

this  case  both  obstacles  were  put  in  the  boy's 
way.  His  father  was  an  irascible  old  colonel, 
who  appeared  unjust,  harsh  and  unsympa- 
thetic. It  was  with  undisguised  relief  that 
the  mother  and  son  saw  him  rejoin  his  regi- 
ment when  his  leave  was  up.  And  because 
the  boy  was  the  only  thing  that  she  really 
possessed  in  the  world,  the  mother  was  so  de- 
voted to  him  that  she  could  never  let  him  go. 
One  of  the  boy's  dreams  ran  thus:  "/  was 
riding  behind  a  carriage  in  which  my  mother 
was  driving.  It  was  going  very  slowly,  and 
I  was  determined  to  pass  it.  With  a  great 
effort,  I  succeeded.  I  then  found  that  I  was 
riding  side-saddle."  All  means  of  locomo- 
tion in  dreams  represent  character  develop- 
ment. His  was  shown  to  be  slow  (which  was 
only  too  true),  and  it  was  kept  back  by  his 
mother.  When  he  has  passed  her,  he  finds 
that  he  is  still  in  the  attitude  of  a  woman.  The 
femininity  of  his  character  came  out  in  other 
dreams  equally  clearly.  "/  was  standing  out- 
side a  house,  waiting  for  a  man  to  come  out." 
The  man  was  his  own  masculine  self,  which 
had  never  yet  appeared.  "/  found  that  I  was 
dressed  in  a  peacock-coloured  skirt."  In  this 
brilliant  cartoon  he  is  identified  with  the  least 
effective  of  all  male  creatures.  All  that  there 
was  of  manliness  about  him  was  this  exhibi- 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

tionism,  this  vanity  and  self-satisfaction  which 
his  mother  had  developed  in  him.  It  was  said 
that  the  mother  could  not  let  him  go.  This 
is  strictly  true:  for  when  he  ceased  to  be  a 
child  in  years,  she  had  kept  him  psychologi- 
cally a  child  but  making  him  into  an  invalid. 
Strenuous  efforts  were  made  to  set  him  free, 
but  by  going  round  to  a  very  large  number 
of  consultants,  his  mother  found  one  who 
agreed  with  her  that  he  had  a  weak  heart, 
and  he  was  made  an  invalid  once  more.  When 
his  mother  dies,  he  will  probably  marry  a 
mother-substitute,  who  will  study  his  health 
and  his  comfort,  and  protect  him  from  any 
of  the  remote  dangers  of  growing  up. 

A  man  of  twenty-six  had  a  dream  that  he 
was  walking  along  and  that  a  woman,  wheel- 
ing a  perambulator  with  a  baby  in  it,  insisted 
on  following  him.  He  couldn't  get  rid  of 
them.  He  was  a  man;  but  the  feminine 
characteristic  that  he  had  never  been  able  to 
throw  off,  the  childish  characteristic  that  he 
was  unable  to  live  down  persisted  in  holding 
him  back.  He  came  to  a  hill,  and  the  peram- 
bulator went  faster  and  faster.  He  realized 
that  unless  he  did  something  there  would  be 
an  accident.  It  was  no  longer  any  good  trying 
to  ignore  them:  he  must  interfere.  He  pulled 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 

himself  together,  and  threw  himself  in  the 
way,  and  stopped  the  perambulator  before  it 
reached  the  bottom  of  the  hill.  The  end  of 
the  dream  gives  a  picture  of  a  definite  virile 
desire  to  make  good,  and  to  prevent  the 
catastrophe.  And  this  was  a  genuine  factor 
in  his  mental  situation.  He  had  had  a  better 
chance  than  the  first  boy.  He  was  the  son 
of  a  perfectly  sensible  mother,  and  of  a  father 
who  was  the  pattern  of  all  that  a  citizen  and 
a  churchwarden  and  a  husband  and  a  father 
should  be.  He  knew  not  only  what  his  chil- 
dren ought  to  do,  but  what  they  ought  to  think 
and  feel  and  believe :  and  he  knew  it  all  with 
absolute  finality.  It  was  this  finality  which 
had  been  the  obstacle  to  his  son's  development. 
He  was  of  the  sensitive  type  that  is  absolutely 
unable  to  grow  up  against,  or  in  spite  of  a 
barrier  of  this  kind.  He  withdrew  into  him- 
self, and  retreated  from  the  whole  conception 
of  manhood,  independence,  aggression  and 
responsibility.  In  one  of  his  dreams  he  found 
a  Black  Maria  and  a  military  chaplain  wait- 
ing at  a  station  (representing  religion  and 
discipline,  and  the  hell-fire  and  punishment 
conceptions).  He  saw  his  father  in  a  railway 
carriage.  The  door  was  open,  and  he  tried 
to  get  in  before  the  train  had  stopped,  and 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

nearly  had  a  fall.  He  decided  to  go  in  a 
smoking  carriage  by  himself.  The  father  dis- 
approved of  smoking.  The  parent  who  is 
trying  to  get  the  boy  into  his  own  compart- 
ment is  likely  to  produce  an  accident,  which 
may  end  in  his  not  coming  at  all,  or  else  he 
may  drive  the  boy  to  take  some  course  in  which 
he  is  sure  of  earning  parental  disapproval.  If 
the  boy  is  presented  with  an  aspect  of  adult 
life,  of  manhood  and  of  responsibility  that 
is  too  uninviting,  too  hard,  too  rigid  and  too 
difficult,  he  is  likely  to  shrink  back  from  the 
whole  idea  of  progress.  Sometimes  it  is  the 
father's  absence  which  hinders  the  boy's  de- 
velopment; and  sometimes  it  is  simply  fear 
of  him.  In  one  of  the  large  military  hospitals, 
it  was  reckoned  that  roughly  twenty  per  cent 
of  the  men  suffering  from  war  neuroses  had 
a  history  of  alcoholism  in  the  father,  dating 
from  the  patient's  boyhood. 

The  view  of  the  emotional  development  of 
the  male  which  has  been  put  forward  in  this 
chapter  has  an  interesting  light  thrown  upon 
it  if  it  is  studied  in  connexion  with  Wagner's 
version  of  the  Parsifal  story.  The  psycho- 
logical truths,  which  have  been  presented 
here  in  bare,  and  perhaps  unconvincing  out- 
line, find  expression  there  in  a  myth  of  ex- 
po 


Emotional  Development:  The  Boy 

traordinary  beauty  and  power.  There  is  a 
wealth  of  detailed  symbolism  that  is  worth 
very  careful  study  in  the  story  of  the  trans- 
formation of  Parsifal  from  the  "blameless 
fool,"  brought  up  in  the  wilderness  by  his 
mother,  to  the  tried  and  perfected  redeemer 
of  society. 

These  are  by  no  means  the  only  ways  in 
which  the  boy's  development  may  be  checked. 
Each  of  the  four  phases  has  its  characteristic 
dangers,  and  at  any  point  he  may  receive  a 
rebuff  which  pushes  him  back  to  the  previous 
phase.  At  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  phase 
he  may  fall  violently  in  love  with  a  girl,  who 
turns  out  to  be  insincere,  shallow,  cynical  or 
unsympathetic.  His  first  hetero-sexual  ro- 
mance has  been  shattered,  and  in  his  disillu- 
sionment and  disappointment  he  falls  back 
into  the  homo-sexual  attitude.  This  is  one  of 
the  ways  in  which  "confirmed  bachelors"  are 
made. 

The  men  whose  interest  remains  perma- 
nently and  exclusively  with  their  own  sex  are 
sometimes  considered  to  represent  an  "inter- 
mediate type"  which  has  a  right  to  develop 
along  its  own  lines.  In  our  tangled,  groping 
and  complex  civilization  there  are  undoubt- 
edly many  such  types,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

trace  the  causes  that  have  produced  them; 
they  are  the  result  of  abnormal  and  artificial 
conditions;  the  conception  of  the  intermediate 
type  has  no  place  in  normal  psychology,  or  in 
normal  sociology.  This  view  is  discussed  in 
more  detail  at  the  end  of  the  next  chapter. 


92 


CHAPTER  V 

EMOTIONAL  DEVELOPMENT: 
THE  GIRL 


ROTATION  OF  PHASES. 

Two  IMPORTANT  CONTRASTS  TO  THE  COURSE  OF 
DEVELOPMENT  IN  THE  BOY: 

1.  The  constant  maternal   impulse:   barriers  in  its 

way: 

(a)  The  husband,  social  and  legal. 

(b)  The  husband,  physical. 

Fear  of  the  conjugal — 
Mary  Rose. 
The  nurse's  dream. 
The  child  of  ten. 

(c)  The  fear  of  motherhood: 

Dream  of  "  the  woman  in 
the  wood." 

(d)  The  discovery  of  being  "  not  wanted." 

2.  The  relation  of  the  two  homo-sexual  phases. 

THE  HOMO-SEXUAL  PHASE  IN  THE  ADOLESCENT  GIRL: 
No  magical  solution. 
Dangers — dream  of  flowers  and  fire. 
Safeguards — public  opinion  and  games. 
A  problem  not  of  the  elimination  of  sentiment, 
but  of  the  direction  of  interest. 

THE  HOMO-SEXUAL  ATTITUDE  IN  THE  ADULT: 
"  The  intermediate  type." 

Criticism    from    the    standpoint    of    sociology. 
Criticism   from   the   standpoint  of   psychology. 

Two  CRITICISMS  DISCUSSED: 

1.  Misunderstanding   of    "the    adjustment   to   the 

potential  mate." 

2.  The  man,  the  woman,  and  the  human  being. 


EMOTIONAL  DEVELOPMENT: 
THE  GIRL 


rotation  of  phases  in  the  girl  and  in 
the  boy  differ  in  some  notable  ways.  The 
first  phase  is  exactly  the  same,  except  that  it 
lasts  a  little  longer:  the  girl  being  perhaps 
two  years  behind  the  boy  in  throwing  off  the 
completely  filial  and  dependent  attitude 
towards  the  mother.  The  girl  then  passes  on, 
not  to  the  father-phase,  as  the  boy  does,  but 
to  the  one  in  which  schoolfellows  occupy  the 
dominant  position  in  her  emotional  life.  This 
phase  lasts  from  about  ten  to  fifteen,  and  it 
therefore  includes  the  period  in  which  the 
normal  girl  passes  through  the  biological 
changes  of  puberty.  This  is  the  time  in  which 
independence  has  to  be  learnt.  It  is  just  as 
important  for  the  girl  as  it  is  for  the  boy;  but 
she  has  a  shorter  time  in  which  to  learn  it,  and 
at  seventeen  she  appears  more  grown  up  than 
the  boy  of  the  same  age.  The  girl's  inde- 
pendence is  different  from  the  boy's  :  it  is  not 
an  absolute  thing,  and  it  is  more  subtle  and 
easily  thrown  out  of  balance. 
95 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

The  length  of  the  second  phase  obviously 
varies  very  much  according  to  the  education 
that  the  girl  receives.  The  public-school  girl 
usually  remains  in  this  phase  until  she  is 
eighteen  or  nineteen.  This  must  be  regarded 
as  an  artificial  retarding  of  development;  but 
it  is  probably  justified  by  the  conditions  of 
society.  It  is  a  convention  which  has  grown 
up  in  response  to  a  definite  social  need,  which 
was  not  met  by  the  previous  type  of  woman's 
education,  which  was  "finished"  at  an  earlier 
age. 

In  the  case  of  the  public-school  girl,  phase 
two  often  lasts  till  eighteen  or  nineteen.  Does 
this  mean  that  her  development  is  being 
artificially  retarded,  or  is  it  just  a  normal 
variation? 

It  is  during  the  third  phase — from  fifteen 
to  eighteen — that  the  part  played  by  the 
father  in  the  girl's  development  becomes  most 
crucial.  The  actual  period  of  his  primacy 
in  the  emotional  life  of  his  daughter  may  be 
a  brief  one;  but  though  it  counts  compara- 
tively little  from  the  positive  point  of  view, 
from  the  negative  point  of  view  it  is  of  vital 
importance.  That  is  to  say  that  if  the  father 
has  failed  to  play  his  part,  the  effect  upon  the 
daughter's  emotional  development  tends  to  be 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

disastrous.    The  reasons  for  this  will  be  dis- 
cussed later. 

At  about  the  age  of  eighteen  the  girl  should 
have  reached  the  fourth  phase,  during  which 
she  is  ready  to  love  and  to  be  loved,  and  so 

I  Mother  H  School fe//ow 

0-10     V  y*  10-15 

HOMO    SEXUAL 


El  Flatter 
15-18 


makes  her  adjustment  to  the  idea  of  parent- 
hood, and  to  the  actual  or  potential  mate. 

In  looking  back  over  the  phases  of  develop- 
ment of  the  girl  and  the  boy,  two  very  impor- 
tant general  contrasts  can  be  observed.    The 
first  of  these  lies  in  the  fact  that  there  is  in 
97 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

the  girl  a  constant  and  permanent  develop- 
mental impulse  which  has  no  exact  parallel 
in  the  boy.  The  second  is  concerned  with  the 
difference  in  the  relation  of  the  two  homo- 
sexual phases. 

Through  the  psychology  of  the  boy — 
though  not  quite  from  the  beginning — there 
runs  the  line  of  self-assertion,  the  impulse  to 
achievement.  At  a  much  earlier  age,  from 
the  moment  when  she  first  nurses  a  doll,  the 
girl  has  begun  to  show  signs  of  the  impulse 
which  runs  through  her  course  of  develop- 
ment: the  maternal  urge,  which  is  a  far  more 
constant  and  a  more  homogeneous  thing  than 
the  urge  to  self-assertion  in  the  boy.  This 
primary  emotional  impulse  in  the  life  of  the 
woman  is  often  unconscious,  and  often  unex- 
pressed. There  are  periods  when  it  appears 
to  be  completely  absent;  and  there  are  girls 
and  women  who  appear  to  betray  no  sign  of 
anything  that  could  be  called  a  maternal  im- 
pulse. Nevertheless,  if  they  are  to  be  classed 
as  normal,  the  assumption  is  that  the  impulse 
is  merely  out  of  sight  for  the  moment,  and 
not  permanently  absent.  There  is  nothing 
strictly  comparable  to  this  in  the  boy's  devel- 
opment. The  nearest  approach  to  it  is  the 
impulse  to  independence  and  achievement  in 
the  widest  sense  of  the  word;  but  the  girl  has 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

the  advantage  in  following  a  far  more  definite 
and  clearly-directed  line  of  development.  It 
leads  straight  to  the  parental  attitude,  which 
the  boy  only  reaches  in  a  more  indirect  way. 

In  both  sexes  the  conjugal,  or  mating  in- 
stinct appears  at  a  certain  phase:  but  it  is,  or 
should  be,  secondary  to  the  more  constant  im- 
pulse of  life.  In  practice,  it  is  expected  that 
the  man  should  be  first  married  to  his  job,  and 
only  after  that  married  to  his  wife;  and  in  the 
girl  the  maternal  impulse  should  be  stronger 
than  the  conjugal.  It  is  even  more  impor- 
tant to  have  good  mothers  in  a  society  than 
to  have  good  wives. 

The  maternal  impulse  very  early  begins  to 
meet  with  barriers  in  the  way  of  its  expres- 
sion. The  little  girl  at  first  announces  her 
intentions  clearly:  "When  I  am  big,  I  am 
going  to  have  five  daughters  and  six  little 
boys" — or  whatever  it  may  be.  She  doesn't 
think  she  can  be  bothered  with  a  husband. 
She  is  told  perhaps  that  unless  she  has  a  hus- 
band she  may  not  have  children — an  unwise 
way  of  putting  it.  Or  it  is  said  that  God  does 
not  send  babies  where  there  is  not  a  husband. 
Evidently  it  is  a  conception  that  must  be 
accepted;  and  this  idea  of  the  necessary  legal 
or  social  husband  is  a  barrier  which  she  over- 
comes without  much  difficulty.  She  fits  the 
99 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

idea  of  a  "Mr.  So-and-So"  into  the  picture. 
At  a  later  stage,  she  begins  to  apprehend 
dimly  that  the  barrier  of  a  husband  between 
herself  and  motherhood  is  not  only  social  and 
conventional,  but  physical;  and  that  it  in- 
volves some  mysterious  act  or  proceeding  of 
which  she  can  have  no  understanding,  and 
only  some  vague  suspicion.  During  the 
second  phase,  when  she  is  chiefly  concerned 
with  her  schoolfellows,  her  unconscious  is  full 
of  bewilderment  and  doubt  and  questioning. 
With  some  girls  it  remains  there  for  a  re- 
markable length  of  time;  with  some  it 
emerges  very  early  into  consciousness.  A 
great  deal  depends  upon  social  environment; 
a  certain  amount  upon  physical  development; 
and  a  certain  amount  also  upon  the  outlook 
of  parents  and  teachers.  The  part  played  by 
the  father  is  of  supreme  importance  in  help- 
ing the  girl  to  get  past  this  barrier  of  doubt 
and  fear  of  the  unknown.  Through  him  she 
should  realize  that  man,  as  the  aggressive 
male,  the  necessary  husband,  can  be  associated 
with  ideas  of  consideration,  reliability,  tender- 
ness, trustworthiness  and  sympathy.  She 
should  be  able  to  argue  to  herself:  "Well, 
anyhow,  if  a  man  like  Daddy  comes  along,  I 
would  be  perfectly  prepared  to  trust  myself 
entirely  to  him."  When  the  father  fails  to 
100 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

inspire  confidence,  when  he  fails  to  perform 
this  function  of  reconciliation,  serious  dam- 
age is  done  to  the  emotional  development  of 
the  girl.  The  nature  of  this  damage  is  seen 
by  psychotherapists  in  the  many  cases  of 
breakdown  in  later  life,  which  can  be  traced 
unquestionably  to  the  third  phase,  and  to  the 
failure  of  the  father.  It  may  also  be  seen  in 
the  still  more  frequent  cases  of  girls  and 
women  who  do  not  break  down,  but  who  go 
through  life  with  a  permanent  bias  of  hos- 
tility towards  the  male  sex.  They  may  have 
been  unable  to  recover  from  the  emotional 
reaction  to  a  father  who  was  alcoholic,  or 
who  was  suspected  of  infidelity  and  threat- 
ened with  a  separation  or  divorce,  or  who 
was  tyrannical :  or  merely  negative.  And  it  is 
not  the  ill-treatment  of  the  daughter  by  the 
father  that  has  been  mainly  responsible  for 
this  result;  the  critical  factor  is  the  husband's 
treatment  of  his  wife  in  the  daughter's 
presence. 

In  Sir  James  Barrie's  play,  Mary  Rose, 
there  is  a  perfect  picture  of  this  fear  of  the 
conjugal  in  the  girl.  Mary  Rose  hid  in  the 
apple  tree,  and  her  father  called  to  her  and 
said,  "Where  are  you?"  She  replied,  "In  the 
apple  tree."  "What  for?"  "Hiding  from 
Simon,  from  you — I  don't  know."  Mary 
101 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

Rose  at  that  moment  was  facing  the  reality 
of  a  prospective  marriage,  and  as  she  did  so, 
she  became  paralysed  with  fright,  as  many  a 
perfectly  normal  girl  has  been;  and  she  hid 
in  the  apple  tree,  not  only  from  the  future 
husband  whom  she  had  just  accepted,  but 
from  the  whole  idea  implied  by  matrimony 
of  man  the  aggressor.  And  so  she  included 
her  father:  "I  am  hiding  from  Simon,  I  am 
hiding  from  you." 

An  example  may  be  given  of  a  case  in  which 
emotional  development  was  turned  aside  from 
the  normal  path  at  a  very  early  age.  At  nine 
years  old,  a  girl  was  exposed  to  an  unrighteous 
act  by  a  man;  and  from  that  time  her  whole 
psychology  turned  into  channels  of  fear  and 
apprehension.  The  first  important  reaction 
was  that  she  determined  to  become  a  nurse. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  she  realized  un- 
consciously what  the  nursing  profession  had 
to  offer  her  in  her  particular  situation :  in  the 
first  place,  a  great  opportunity  of  direct  and 
satisfying  sublimation  of  the  maternal  im- 
pulse, without  the  inclusion  of  the  conjugal 
factor;  and  secondly,  the  assured  protection 
from  male  aggression  which  the  nurse's  uni- 
form is  supposed  to  guarantee.  She  grew  up, 
and  became  a  nurse,  and  a  man  wished  to 
marry  her.  She  could  not  refuse  him,  because 
102 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

she  felt  that  he  was  a  thoroughly  good  man ; 
but  she  could  not  accept  him.  He  waited  for 
a  period  of  something  like  seven  years,  and 
then  she  definitely  refused  him.  As  she  went 
on,  she  became  a  more  and  more  perfect  nurse 
in  all  ways  in  which  the  helpless  patient  was 
concerned;  but  it  was  noticed — and  she  said 
it  herself — that  she  was  losing  interest  more 
and  more  in  the  cases  that  were  not  helpless. 
It  was  noticed  also  that  she  was  showing 
signs  of  "developing  the  matron  spirit";  she 
was  becoming  self-assertive,  and  rather  dom- 
ineering, in  a  way  that  was  perfectly  foreign 
to  her  real  character.  She  felt  it  herself,  and 
admitted  that  she  was  not  getting  on  so  well 
in  the  hospital  as  she  had  once  done,  but  she 
felt  unable  to  understand  or  alter  it.  At  about 
this  time  she  had  a  dream,  which  ran  thus: 
"We  'were  sitting  at  dinner.  Water  'was  being 
handed  round  from  a  skin.  Everybody  else 
had  tumblers  or  cups:  I  only  had  a  spoon  of 
rat-tail  pattern.  Somebody  said:  'Never 
mind;  hold  it  out.'  I  held  it  out,  and  as  the 
water  was  poured  onto  it,  it  turned  into  a 
tumbler.  But  I  could  still  see  the  rat-tail  pat- 
tern on  the  glass."  The  dream  makes  use  of 
the  two  elementary  symbols  of  the  sexes  that 
run  through  all  mythology  and  all  dream- 
symbolism  :  the  symbols  of  the  Cup  and  Spear, 
103 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

here  represented  by  the  tumbler  and  the  rat- 
tail  pattern.  The  Spear  represents  virility; 
it  is  primarily  a  phallic  symbol,  and  sec- 
ondarily the  symbol  of  the  male  characteristics 
of  self-assertion  and  executive  power.  The 
Cup  or  the  Grail  is  the  great  symbol  of  the 
woman  and  her  qualities  of  receptiveness. 
This  quality  is  shown  as  being  quite  inade- 
quate in  the  dreamer:  she  has  at  first  only  a 
spoon  instead  of  a  tumbler;  and  the  spoon  is 
marked  by  the  phallic  symbol.  But  her 
womanly  capacity  is  there  potentially;  and 
as  soon  as  she  adopts  the  receptive  attitude,  it 
is  increased.  The  dream  ends  with  a  final 
touch  of  criticism :  the  rat-tail  pattern  has  not 
quite  disappeared.  The  dream  is  given  at 
this  point  because  it  expresses,  with  a  kind  of 
elementary  completeness,  certain  bed  rock 
facts  about  character  and  development.  Some 
of  the  principles  of  interpretation  which  are 
here  assumed  will  be  discussed  in  a  later 
chapter. 

Another  dream  that  is  worth  quoting  in 
this  connexion  is  that  of  a  girl  of  ten,  who 
was  perfectly  normal  and  healthy:  but  rather 
self-assertive,  and  lacking  in  some  of  the  more 
gentle  and  subtle  elements  of  a  girl's  psychol- 
ogy:— "I  was  walking  with  a  man.  I  tried 
to  leave  himt  but  I  saw  a  wagonette  coming 
104 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

along  with  a  lot  of  nasty  men  in  it,  and  I  was 
frightened,  so  I  went  back  to  the  friendly 
man,  because  I  thought  he  would  protect  me." 
"The  friendly  man"  was  her  own  masculinity. 
Down  in  her  unconscious  there  was  already 
this  idea  of  protecting  herself  from  male 
aggression  by  maintaining  and  developing  her 
own  masculine  characteristics.  What  she  was 
dreaming  at  ten,  she  might  be  doing  at  eigh- 
teen. Needless  to  say,  she  would  not  have 
understood,  or  been  helped,  if  she  had  had  this 
interpretation  given  to  her;  but  it  could  be 
given  to  her  parents;  and  it  could  show  them 
where  her  danger  was  going  to  lie.  If  she 
had  been  exposed  to  an  alcoholic  father,  or 
even  to  a  father  who  was  inconsiderate  and 
unsympathetic  towards  her  mother,  she  would 
have  been  reinforced  in  her  idea  of  hanging 
on  to  her  masculine  characteristics  as  the  best 
armour  for  life.  Instead,  she  needed  to  be  set 
free  from  this  phantom  of  fear,  and  the  de- 
fence and  resistance  that  resulted  from  it. 

There  is  another  barrier  which  the  maternal 
impulse  has  to  meet,  and  that  is  the  fear  of 
motherhood.  The  point  at  which  a  girl  faces 
its  physical  implications  sometimes  comes 
very  early  in  life,  and  sometimes  not  till  after 
marriage.  An  extreme  case  is  that  of  a  patient 
whose  whole  psychology  turned  upon  a  fear 
105 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

of  motherhood,  which  could  be  traced  back  to 
her  childhood.  When  she  was  about  five  years 
old  she  had  heard  her  mother  say:  "If  you 
children  knew  what  it  was  to  be  a  mother, 
you  would  be  a  great  deal  more  appreciative 
of  your  mother,  and  you  would  think  twice 
before  becoming  mothers  yourselves."  The 
remark  was  probably  meant  for  an  elder  sister ; 
but  it  had  remained  fixed  in  the  child's  mind, 
and  she  could  never  forget  it. 

The  same  fear  was  one  of  the  factors  of 
the  mental  situation  of  a  girl  of  twenty-three, 
who  had  broken  down  over  the  question  of  an 
engagement.  She  had  this  dream : — "I  heard 
that  one  of  your  patients  had  killed  her 
baby.  I  was  talking  to  some  one  in  your  study 
who  tried  to  remind  me  that  eight  years  ago 
a  woman  was  in  a  wood,  and  a  man  had  sud- 
denly told  her  that  she  was  going  to  have  a 
baby.  She  was  so  frightened  that  she  killed 
the  baby,  and  buried  it  in  the  wood"  The 
dream  is  a  particularly  interesting  one,  be- 
cause it  is  one  of  those  that  have  a  double 
thread  of  meaning  running  through.  The 
baby  represents  first  the  physical  baby  and 
so  the  conception  of  motherhood;  and,  sec- 
ondly, re-birth — the  new  adjustment,  the  new 
phase  that  was  germinating,  and  had  been 
killed  off.  "Some  one  in  your  study"  brings  in 
106 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

the  idea  of  analysis,  through  which  she  comes 
into  contact  with  her  own  unconscious,  and 
things  that  she  had  forgotten.  "Eight  years 
ago" — that  is,  when  she  was  fifteen — what 
had  happened  to  her?  She  recalled  it  with 
difficulty.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  she  had  been 
with  a  schoolboy  of  about  her  own  age,  who 
had  asked  her  unsuitable  questions.  She  had 
stopped  the  conversation,  but  the  questions 
had  been  enough  to  bring  her  for  a  moment 
face  to  face  with  the  idea  of  physical  mother- 
hood. She  had  come  up  against  it  prema- 
turely, and  she  had  repressed  it  completely, 
and  not  thought  of  it  again.  "A  man  had  sud- 
denly told  her  that  she  was  going  to  have  a 
baby,  and  she  was  so  frightened  that  she  killed 
the  baby,  and  buried  it  in  the  wood."  The 
wood  represents  the  dark  and  hidden  depths 
of  the  unconscious.  The  baby  that  she  had 
killed  and  buried  in  her  unconscious  was  the 
re-birth  which  was  just  beginning  to  take 
place,  at  the  opening  of  her  third  phase  of 
development — a  new  orientation  which  would 
have  included  the  adjustment  to  the  physical 
implications  of  motherhood. 

There  is  a  wrong  that  is  sometimes  done  to 
the  child,  which  adds  enormously  to  the  bur- 
den of  growing  up,   and   facing  life.     The 
parents  may  commit  the  well-nigh  unpardon- 
107 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

able  sin  of  letting  the  girl  know  that  she  is 
not  wanted,  because  there  were  two,  three  or 
four  already,  and  a  boy  had  been  hoped  for. 
The  parents  may  never  say  it  to  the  child,  but 
if  this  is  known  at  all,  there  is  always  the 
chance  that  aunts  or  uncles  or  nurses  or 
servants  may,  in  a  moment  of  indiscretion  or 
spite,  pass  the  word  on;  and  the  girl  as  she 
grows  up  will  find  it  terribly  hard  to  forget. 
These  are  some  of  the  barriers  which  rise 
up  in  the  mind  of  the  girl,  sometimes  in 
adolescence,  sometimes  before  it,  and  some- 
times in  the  unopened  mind  of  a  woman  who 
is  past  adolescence  physically,  but  has  not  even 
reached  it  psychologically,  and  emotionally. 
They  are  fears  that  have  to  be  met  openly 
and  frankly  and  on  the  conscious  plane. 
Sometimes  the  girl  is  fortunate  enough  to 
have  a  mother  or  somebody  else  from  whom 
she  can  get  reassurance  and  straight  informa- 
tion; but  more  often  than  not  she  says,  as 
countless  people  have  said  to  the  writer:  "Of 
course,  I  had  nobody  to  ask,  so  I  kept  it  to 
myself."  And  so  the  questioning  goes  on, 
sometimes  conscious  and  unexpressed,  some- 
times unconscious  and  not  even  recognized  in 
the  girl's  mind:  "What  are  going  to  be  the 
implications,  especially  the  physical  implica- 
tions, of  growing  up?  What  will  marriage 
108 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

demand?  And  motherhood?"  The  obscure 
working  of  these  fears  withholds  many  girls 
from  developing  normally  and  realizing 
themselves  to  the  full. 

It  was  said  that  there  were  two  main  differ- 
ences between  courses  of  development  in  the 
girl  and  in  the  boy.  The  first  of  these  has 
been  dealt  with;  the  second  lies  in  the  dif- 
ferent relation  of  the  two  homo-sexual  phases. 
The  two  phases  of  psychological  homo-sexu- 
ality in  the  boy  were  passed  through,  roughly, 
from  the  ages  of  eight  to  eighteen :  that  is  to 
say,  they  persisted  up  to  the  verge  of  the  mat- 
ing period.  In  the  girl  the  simpler  process  of 
development  takes  place:  the  two  homo- 
sexual phases  come  first,  and  then,  from  about 
the  time  of  puberty,  she  passes  for  good  to 
the  hetero-sexual  phase.  She  has  not  got  to 
transform  her  adjustment  to  the  other  sex  in 
the  same  radical  way  that  the  boy  has  to  do, 
as  he  passes  from  the  original  emotional  rela- 
tion to  the  mother  to  the  ultimate  relation  to 
the  wife.  It  is  true  that  she  has  her  pilgrim- 
age to  make  from  the  filial  attitude  of  depen- 
dence to  the  adult  attitude  of  independence; 
but  it  is  a  subtler  change  than  the  boy  passes 
through.  Her  self-realization  does  not  lie 
along  the  line  of  self-assertion,  but  it  includes 
a  form  of  independence  which  is  a  strange 
109 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

blending  of  individuality  and  self-extinction. 
The  homo-sexual  phase  of  the  girl's  adoles- 
cence is  one  that  is  peculiarly  the  concern  of 
the  teacher,  and  it  often  gives  rise  to  great 
anxiety  and  perplexity.  The  new  psychology 
has  no  magical  solution  to  offer  to  these  diffi- 
culties, no  cut-and-dried  rules  that  can  be 
applied  unfailingly  in  all  cases,  and  no  method 
of  eliminating  all  danger  from  the  situation. 
It  should,  however,  be  able  to  contribute 
something  to  the  understanding  of  the  prob- 
lem. It  is  similar  to  the  problem  with  boys; 
but  in  the  case  of  girls  the  danger  is  less  acute, 
more  common,  more  subtle,  and  harder  to 
define  and  to  guard  against.  No  intimacy 
between  adolescent  girls  that  is  at  all  senti- 
mental and  romantic  is  devoid  of  risk;  but  so 
much  of  it  is  normal  and  natural  that  to  play 
for  safety  consistently  would  be  as  undesirable 
as  it  is  impossible.  It  would  lead  to  a  great 
impoverishment  of  the  lives  of  many  girls 
who  would  have  avoided  the  dangers,  and 
whose  experience  would  have  been  enriched 
by  a  close  friendship.  The  danger  lies  in  the 
possibility  of  romance  being  kindled  to 
passion,  the  point  at  which  sentiment  is  associ- 
ated with  physical  sensation.  The  uncon- 
scious estimate  of  this  danger  is  shown  in  the 
dream  of  a  girl,  who  had  conceived  a  romantic 
no 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

devotion  for  an  older  woman.  This  Mrs.  X 
was  gifted,  charming  and  beautiful — and  per- 
haps slightly  sentimental.  "I  dreamed  that 
Mrs.  X  was  holding  up  a  bunch  of  roses  of 
transcendent  beauty.  She  took  them  out  one 
by  one  and  dropped  them  to  the  ground.  As 
each  touched  the  earth,  it  burst  into  flame.  I 
'was  fascinated  by  the  miracle,  until  suddenly 
I  realized  that  I  was  surrounded  by  flames, 
and  I  woke  in  terror."  Flowers  are  the  sym- 
bol of  romance;  and  this  is  a  telling  picture 
of  the  experience  of  the  adolescent,  playing 
with  a  romantic  situation,  until  it  suddenly 
assumes  a  menacing  aspect,  and  brings  a  terri- 
fied awakening  to  reality.  Fear  sometimes 
intervenes  to  save  the  individual  from  danger, 
but  it  is  a  thoroughly  undesirable  motive  to 
stimulate  from  without.  There  are  plenty  of 
influences  which  should  be  at  work  to  dis- 
courage this  type  of  experience  without  hav- 
ing resource  to  the  appeal  to  fear.  This,  in- 
deed, is  likely  to  surround  the  subject  with 
an  emotional  atmosphere,  which  is  the  reverse 
of  helpful. 

The  problem  should  be  solved  as  far  as 
possible  indirectly,  that  is,  by  the  general 
standard  of  ideals  and  interests  in  the  school, 
rather  than  by  focussing  attention  upon  it. 
The  teacher  needs  to  study  and  to  watch  with 
i  ii 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

the  skill  that  does  not  show  that  it  is  watch- 
ing. Those  who  condemn  sentimental  attach- 
ments most  vehemently  sometimes  try  to  create 
an  atmosphere  of  bracing  athleticism,  which 
is  meant  to  prove  fatal  to  sentiment  and  to 
romance.  The  girl  may  be  entirely  influenced 
by  it  at  the  time,  but  it  is  an  unwise  and  ulti- 
mately an  ineffective  method  of  handling  the 
situation,  because  it  is  based  on  the  repression 
of  a  perfectly  natural  emotion.  It  is  indeed 
only  an  attempt  to  transplant  to  a  less  con- 
genial soil  a  method  which  is  only  partially 
successful  in  boys'  schools:  the  method  of 
relying  too  exclusively  on  the  effect  of  games 
and  public  opinion  in  safeguarding  moral 
interests.  It  is  a  method  which  is  perfectly 
sound  and  helpful  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  is 
useless  to  pretend  that  it  goes  all  the  way. 
Mr.  Glutton  Brock  has  pointed  out  that  the 
boy's  problem  is  partly  created  by  the  fact 
that  his  education  does  not  give  normal  scope 
to  his  spiritual  faculties.  "Often  the  sexual 
instinct  has  a  vast  power  over  a  boy's  mind, 
because  it  means  mystery  and  romance  in  a 
thoroughly  prosaic  world;  and  the  world  has 
become  prosaic  to  him  because  all  the  desires 
of  his  spirit  have  been  suppressed.  He  has 
learnt  to  care  more  for  games  and  the  approval 
of  other  boys  than  for  truth  or  beauty,  or  even 
112 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

goodness.  .  .  .  But  if  his  life  before  had  not 
become  unreal  and  second-hand,  this  reality 
would  not  be  so  enthralling  to  him."  *  We 
are  not  at  the  moment  concerned  to  discuss  the 
justice  of  this  criticism  in  relation  to  any  par- 
ticular type  of  school,  but  it  is  based  on  an 
undeniable  truth  which  needs  to  be  empha- 
sised at  this  point.  It  is  that  the  problem  is 
largely  one  of  direction  of  interest.  If  the 
legitimate  channels  of  interest  approved  by 
the  school  are  too  narrow,  or  too  stereotyped, 
emotional  energy  is  likely  to  spend  itself  un- 
wisely along  other  lines.  Among  these  ap- 
proved interests,  physical  training  will  nor- 
mally rank  very  high;  but  if  athleticism  is 
too  dominant,  and  if  girls  are  not  able  to  find 
adequate  expression  for  the  imaginative,  crea- 
tive, intellectual  and  idealistic  sides  of  their 
nature,  then  they  may  be  inclined  to  take 
refuge  from  a  prosaic  world  in  the  highly- 
coloured  romance  of  a  grande  passion. 

It  is  very  common  to  find  women  who  have 
never  passed  beyond  the  homo-sexual  phase 
of  emotional  development,  or  who  have  re- 
verted to  it  in  later  life.  The  preponderance 
of  women  among  the  population  and  the  pres- 
ent social  conditions  have  led  to  the  view — 

1  A.  Glutton  Brock :  The  Ultimate  Belief.  Constable, 
1916.  p.  95. 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

certainly  in  the  so-called  upper  stratum  of 
society — that  girls  should  be  brought  up  to 
be  independent  of  men,  not  only  economically, 
but  also  emotionally.  The  whole  idea  of  mar- 
riage and  motherhood  should  be  kept  out  of 
their  minds  as  far  as  possible.  This  may  be 
done  by  some  without  loss,  but  it  is  done  by 
others  at  a  very  great  price,  as  any  clinical 
psychologist  can  tell.  There  are  those  who 
are  incapable  of  shutting  out  of  their  minds 
the  phantasy  of  marriage  and  motherhood, 
without  replacing  it  by  the  reality  of  a  homo- 
sexual attitude  to  life,  which  very  frequently 
develops  into  active  homo-sexuality.  The  in- 
ference drawn  by  some  people  is  that  modern 
conditions  justify  the  existence  of  the  homo- 
sexual type,  and  that  it  is  only  along  these 
lines  that  many  women  to-day  can  attain  to 
full  self-expression.  The  present  writer  is 
unable  to  accept  this  view  for  two  reasons, 
one  sociological  and  one  psychological. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  social  evolution, 
the  intermediate  type  is  valueless:  it  is  a  devia- 
tion from  the  normal  line  of  progress,  which 
is  found  in  the  parental  type,  a  side-tracking 
of  the  emotional  forces.  There  are  some 
psychologists  who  justify  it  solely  on  the 
grounds  of  the  individual's  liberty  of  self- 
expression.  This  view  can  only  be  held  by 
114 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

regarding  the  individual  as  an  isolated  unit, 
and  society  as  the  aggregation  of  such  units, 
an  idea  which  cannot  be  co-ordinated  with 
any  known  sociological  conception.  If  we  are 
to  accept  the  fundamental  fact  that  man  is  a 
gregarious  animal,  and  that  we  live  in,  by  and 
through  society,  then  it  must  appear  that  there 
are  points  at  which  individual  liberty  must 
be  subordinated  to  the  claims  of  society,  and 
the  demand  for  self-sacrifice  becomes  more 
insistent  than  the  demand  for  self-expression. 
It  has  been  argued  that  because  so  many 
women  will  go  through  life  unmarried,  it  is 
therefore  better  to  abandon  all  idea  of  educat- 
ing them  for  parenthood,  and  for  the  adjust- 
ment to  the  potential  mate.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  individual's  immediate  comfort 
and  satisfaction,  that  may  be  quite  true.  If 
we  bring  up  girls  with  the  central  idea  that 
motherhood  is  the  greatest  blessing  to  be 
looked  for,  we  need  to  do  so  realizing  that 
this  outlook  on  life  may  cause  them  a  great 
deal  of  pain,  if  the  riches  of  motherhood  do 
not  come  their  way;  but  that,  in  the  interests 
of  society,  and  of  their  own  development,  one 
is  not  entitled,  for  their  individual  comfort, 
to  minimise  the  value  of  this  point  of  view. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  psychological 
development,  homo-sexuality  in  the  adult  is 
"5 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

a  regression.  If  the  general  scheme  of  the 
rotation  of  phases  in  the  boy  and  the  girl  is 
accepted,  this  is  a  sufficiently  obvious  con- 
clusion. Clinical  experience  confirms  the 
view  that  in  the  long  run  the  man  or  woman 
of  the  intermediate  type  is  bound  to  pay  the 
price  of  regression,  in  one  way  or  another. 
The  unmanly  man  and  the  unwomanly  woman 
who  have  branched  off  from  the  line  of  nor- 
mal emotional  development  in  the  search  for 
self-expression,  are  apt  to  find  that  the  path 
they  had  chosen,  which  looked  so  promising, 
has  led  them  to  a  rather  dreary  wilderness. 

After  giving  a  lecture  on  the  subject  of  this 
chapter,  the  writer  once  received  a  letter  from 
a  member  of  the  audience,  who  said  that  she 
was  "haunted  by  the  vision  of  a  million 
women,  immolated  on  the  altar  of  society's 
welfare,  in  consequence  of  regarding  their 
life  work  as  of  secondary  importance."  From 
the  ages  of  eighteen  to  thirty-five,  these 
women  were  pictured  as  "consciously  seeking 
their  mate,"  with  disastrous  results  to  their 
social  efficiency.  It  was  assumed  that  the  ad- 
justment to  the  potential  mate  implied,  ipso 
facto,  a  failure  of  adjustment  to  any  circum- 
stances except  the  prospect  of  marriage.  It 
is  necessary  to  guard  against  this  alarming 
possibility  of  misunderstanding.  Actual  mar- 
116 


Emotional  Development:  The  Girl 

riage  and  motherhood  remain  as  the  typical 
opportunities  of  woman's  self-realization;  but 
it  is  impossible  to  maintain  that  they  are  the 
only  opportunities.  Self-realization  is  an 
achievement  of  character,  rather  than  of  cir- 
cumstance, and  there  are  many  unmarried 
women  who  attain  to  it,  and  not  a  few  married 
women  who  fail  to  do  so.  The  writer's  con- 
tention is  that  in  either  case  there  is  the  same 
need  for  the  fundamental  recognition  of  all 
that  womanhood  implies,  and  that  this  is  the 
only  secure  basis  alike  for  the  direct  expres- 
sion of  the  maternal  and  conjugal  impulses  in 
marriage,  and  for  their  sublimation  in  the 
service  of  the  community.  It  is  not  the  only 
basis,  nor  the  easiest  one.  Psychological  im- 
maturity— first  intellectually  and  later  emo- 
tionally— has  long  been  preferred  as  the 
suitable  basis  for  the  unmarried  woman's  ad- 
justment to  life.  The  nature  of  the  psycho- 
logical and  ethical  situation  which  is  thereby 
created  will  be  discussed  in  later  chapters.1 
Adjustment  on  the  basis  of  psychological  ma- 
turity implies  a  more  costly  form  of  self- 
renunciation  and  a  richer  contribution  to  the 
service  of  society. 

It  will  seem  to  many  people  that  the  con- 

1  Chapter  vi,  "The  Unconscious  Motive,"  and  chapter 
vii,  "Mental  Mechanisms." 

117 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

ception  of  the  role  of  woman  which  has  been 
put  forward  in  this  chapter  is  at  bottom  a  re- 
actionary and  a  minimising  view.  It  may  be 
suspected  of  being  part  of  that  general  tend- 
ency "to  think  of  man  as  being  primarily  a 
human  being,  with  full  human  rights,  and 
as  being  the  normal  type  of  the  complete 
human  being,  and  of  woman  as  being  'prim- 
arily a  mother/  and  as  having  a  'peculiar 
contribution'  to  make  in  various  directions."1 
It  will  be  remembered,  however,  that  in  the 
last  chapter,  so  far  from  conceiving  of  man 
as  a  completely  self-sufficient  human  being, 
it  was  maintained  that  his  relation  to  women 
was  a  central  factor  in  his  emotional  develop- 
ment. In  this  connexion  the  reader  may  be 
referred  once  more  to  the  Parsifal  myth, 
wherein  it  appears  that  Parsifal's  qualifica- 
tion as  a  redeemer  of  society  was  ultimately 
dependent  upon  Kundry;  and  that  without 
Kundry,  who  at  first  awakened  him,  and  at 
last  washed  his  feet,  he  could  never  have  be- 
come fit  for  the  task  that  he  eventually  per- 
formed. The  man  has  to  realize  his  manhood, 
and  the  woman  her  womanhood;  and  it  is 
only  so  that  each  attains  to  the  full  stature  of 
humanity. 

1  "Some  Aspects  of  the  Woman's  Movement,"  Student 
Christian  Movement ,  p.  201. 

118 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  UNCONSCIOUS  MOTIVE 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  MOTIVE  THE  CENTRAL  FACT  FOR 
ANALYTICAL  PSYCHOLOGY: 
Freud's  original  discovery. 

EXAMPLE  FROM  WAR  MATERIAL: 

Illustrating  the  twofold  function  of  neurosis. 

THE  UNCONSCIOUS  MOTIVE  IN  THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  IN 
THE  COMMUNITY. 

THE  NEUROSES  OF  PEACE  TIME  :  THE  DEFENCE  AGAINST 
PROGRESS. 

FOUR  EXAMPLES  OF  THE  WORKING  OF  THE  UNCON- 
SCIOUS MOTIVE: 

The  corporal  in  Egypt. 
The  lady  with  insomnia. 
Mademoiselle  X. 
Train  phobia. 

THE  UNCONSCIOUS  MOTIVE  AND  EMOTIONAL  DEVELOP- 
MENT. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  MOTIVE 

/HpHE  central  fact  for  analytical  psychology 
•••  is  the  unconscious  motive.  This  concep- 
tion we  owe  to  the  genius  of  Freud,  who  was 
led  to  it  by  his  study  of  the  phenomena  of  con- 
flict and  repression. 

Freud's  discoveries  centred  upon  the  uni- 
versal fact  of  conflict :  the  inevitable  clash  be- 
tween the  primitive  instincts  and  the  demands 
of  the  herd.  He  realized  that  the  appetite  of 
the  individual,  biologically,  must  be  at  vari- 
ance with  the  ideals  of  the  individual,  socially 
and  spiritually.  And  he  saw  that  these  con- 
flicts were  most  commonly  treated  on  the 
principle  of  repression  or  suppression;  that 
is,  by  an  automatic  or  by  a  deliberate  process 
of  forgetting,  ignoring,  putting  out  of  sight, 
one  or  other  of  the  conflicting  motives.  He 
found  that  conventional  morality  was  content 
not  to  probe  further  than  this;  and  that  it  had 
invented  its  own  psychology:  the  theory  that 
if  a  primitive  desire  is  denied  expression  it 
will  gradually  wither  away  and  die.  Freud 
set  himself  to  follow  the  trail  of  defeated 
motive  beyond  this  point,  forging  his  own  in- 
121 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

strument  of  the  psycho-analytic  method  as  he 
went.  It  led  him  into  a  new  country,  the  dis- 
covery of  which  places  him  among  the  world's 
greatest  pioneers. 

The  mechanisms  of  conflict  and  repression 
will  be  discussed  in  a  later  chapter:  we  are 
at  present  concerned  with  the  product  of 
them,  the  repressed  impulse,  which  exerts  an 
unrecognized  influence  on  conduct  and  be- 
haviour. How  are  we  to  conceive  the  general 
nature  of  the  conflict?  Those  who  seek  a  con- 
clusive answer  to  this  question  will  find  them- 
selves carried  far  into  the  regions  of  psycho- 
logical controversy,  and  perhaps  beyond  them. 
A  part  of  the  answer  may  be  given  in  words 
not  of  science,  but  of  art:  "Neither  his  fel- 
lows, nor  his  gods,  nor  his  passions  will  leave 
a  man  alone" 1  These  elements  not  only  come 
into  conflict  with  one  another,  but  may  be 
themselves  the  centres  of  the  conflict  between 
regression  and  progress.  The  herd  instinct 
sometimes  makes  conflicting  demands  upon 
the  individual;  the  mythical  warfare  of  the 
gods  represents  a  real  fact  of  subjective  human 
experience;  the  primitive  instincts  and  de- 
sires do  not  present  a  united  front.  It  has 
already  been  shown,  in  discussing  emotional 

1  Notes  on  Life  and  Letters,  by  Joseph  Conrad.  J.  M. 
Dent  &  Sons.  p.  19. 

122 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

development,  how  the  biological  urge  towards 
completeness  may  come  into  conflict  with 
Each  of  the  primitive  instincts  is  liable  to 
conflict  with  the  demands  of  the  herd.  Under 
conspicuous  instance  is  the  conflict  between 
the  instinct  of  procreation  and  the  social  code; 
but  exactly  the  same  phenomena  of  conflict 
and  repression  and  neurosis  have  been  ob- 
served in  connexion  with  the  other  instincts. 
The  effect  of  the  unconscious  motive  may 
be  shown  reduced  to  its  simplest  terms  in  an 
illustration  taken  from  the  conflicts  of  war- 
time, centring  upon  the  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation. We  will  take  the  cases  of  three  men, 
who  shall  be  known  as  the  sergeant,  the  cor- 
poral and  the  private.  The  sergeant  is  a  man 
who  is  fully  acquainted  with  his  own  motives. 
He  is  aware  that  he  wants  to  join  up,  and  that 
he  will  never  be  happy  if  he  does  not;  but  he 
is  no  less  aware  that  he  does  not  want  to  face 
death,  mutilation,  imprisonment,  the  prospect 
of  leaving  his  family  unprovided  for,  and  all 


SERGEANT 


CORPORAL 


PRIVATE 


I23 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

the  other  risks  involved  in  volunteering.  With 
all  these  considerations  clearly  before  him,  he 
decides  to  go*  On  the  psychological  plane  he 
is  fully  associated:  there  are  no  relevant  fac- 
tors that  he  is  ignoring,  no  parts  of  his  mental 
life  that  are  insulated  and  not  dynamic  in  his 
decision.  On  the  ethical  plane  he  is  adjusted 
to  the  situation,  for  he  has  made  the  right 
moral  choice. 

The  private  is  also  fully  associated.  He  has 
been  called  up  as  a  reservist  or  a  conscript, 
and  he  knows  that  the  fear  of  death  and  pain 
and  loss  count  more  heavily  with  him  than 
the  demands  of  patriotism.  He  has  decided 
that  he  does  not  mean  to  go  through  with  it. 
When  he  finds  himself  in  the  trenches,  he  soon 
appears  before  the  medical  officer,  complain- 
ing of  pains  in  his  back.  Medical  treatment 
leaves  his  symptoms  unaffected,  and  in  course 
of  time  the  patience  of  the  medical  officer  is 
worn  out.  The  man  is  sent  to  the  casualty 
clearing  station,  thence  to  the  base,  and  so  to 
England,  and  a  pension.  His  case  was  quite 
understood,  and  this  was  the  only  method  that 
could  be  applied  to  it.  He  is  the  type  that  is 
psychologically  associated,  but  not  ethically 
adjusted. 

So  far  we  are  presented  with  a  picture 
which  is  on  the  lines  of  the  old  morality,  with 
124 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

its  clear-cut  distinction  between  the  good  man 
and  the  bad,  and  its  definite  choice  between 
right  and  wrong.  The  case  of  the  third  man, 
the  corporal,  illustrates  the  effects  of  the  un- 
conscious motive,  its  confusing  and  invali- 
dating influence  on  behaviour,  regarded  from 
the  ethical  standpoint.  It  cannot  be  judged 
on  the  basis  of  a  morality  which  always  pre- 
supposes complete  responsibility  for  behav- 
iour, and  makes  no  concessions  for  the  people 
who  act  and  do  not  know  what  they  do.  When 
the  corporal  saw  the  recruiting  posters,  he  was 
terribly  afraid,  and  for  an  instant  he  realized 
it,  and  knew  the  truth  of  his  own  mental  situa- 
tion. It  was  impossible  to  face,  and  he  forgot 
it  as  quickly  and  completely  as  possible.  He 
was  probably  highly  suggestible ;  and  when  all 
his  friends  joined  up,  he  went  with  them.  He 
had  a  great  deal  more  self-respect  than  the 
private ;  he  told  himself  that  he  was  not  afraid, 
and  that  he  was  going  through  with  it.  He 
kept  up  his  spirits  with  plenty  of  whistling 
and  cigarette-smoking,  and  other  forms  of  ex- 
traversion  which  are  adopted  by  people  who 
dare  not  stop  to  face  their  own  internal  situa- 
tion. His  patriotic  motives  were  expressed  and 
satisfied ;  his  fears  were  put  out  of  conscious- 
ness. He  had  made  a  quasi-adjustment  on  a 
wholly  inadequate  basis,  and  on  this  basis  of 
125 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

repression  and  ignorance  of  his  own  motives, 
he  went  out  to  France.  There  were  some  men 
of  his  type  who  did  not  get  as  far  as  that.  With 
some  the  insecure  adjustment  broke  down  at 
the  first  air-raid ;  others  had  their  first  hystero- 
epileptic  seizure  literally  when  they  set  foot 
on  French  soil  at  Havre.  Some  got  as  far  as 
the  billets;  some  to  the  trenches,  a  few  held 
out  for  six  or  nine  months,  but  never  much 
longer. 

We  will  suppose  that  the  corporal  reached 
the  trenches,  and  that  in  course  of  time  a  shell 
burst  near  and  buried  both  him  and  the  ser- 
geant. Both  were  dug  out,  and  brought  to  the 
casualty  clearing  station  in  about  the  same 
state  of  shell-shock.  After  a  few  days,  the 
sergeant  began  to  recover,  and  in  time  rejoined 
his  unit.  But  at  the  end  of  a  week  the  cor- 
poral was  worse.  His  old  symptoms  remained, 
and  new  ones  appeared.  It  was  said  officially 
that  whereas  the  sergeant  had  had  a  mild  at- 
tack of  shell-shock,  the  corporal  was  having 
a  severe  one ;  but  no  one  was  ever  able  to  ex- 
plain why  it  was  that  shell-shock  should  be- 
come progressively  worse,  when  the  man  was 
removed  from  the  lines,  and  sent  to  hospital. 
The  explanation  lay  in  the  fact  that  these  were 
cases  of  suffering,  not  from  the  physical  effects 
of  shell-concussion,  but  from  war  neuroses. 
126 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

The  shock  had  broken  down  the  corporal's 
quasi-adjustment.  It  had  released  the  great 
dynamic  of  fear  that  he  had  hitherto  been  able 
to  ignore.  The  apprehension  of  danger  had 
been  more  or  less  successfully  kept  out  of  his 
consciousness ;  but  now  that  he  had  this  definite 
experience  of  it,  he  knew  that  he  could  never 
forget  it  again.  The  repression  on  which  his 
adjustment  had  been  founded  was  broken  up, 
and  he  realized  vaguely  that  he  could  not  go 
back  to  the  trenches.  Though  he  was  not  con- 
scious of  it,  an  acute  conflict  had  arisen  within 
him.  He  could  not  escape  it  as  the  private 
had  done,  by  simply  "swinging  the  lead." 
Ethically,  socially,  morally,  perhaps  relig- 
iously, he  was  a  higher  type  than  the  man  who 
did  not  give  himself  a  chance  of  a  neurosis. 
When  he  was  asked  what  he  felt  about  rejoin- 
ing his  unit,  he  invariably  replied  that  if  only 
his  "nerves"  could  be  put  right  "nothing 
would  please  him  more  than  to  have  Ihe 
chance  of  getting  a  bit  of  his  own  back  from 
the  Hun."  In  almost  identical  phraseology 
this  has  been  said  to  the  writer  by  countless 
patients  suffering  from  war  neuroses.  They 
were  perfectly  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  their 
"nerves"  existed  primarily  to  prevent  them 
from  getting  anywhere  near  the  Hun.  The 
127 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

first  function  of  every  neurosis  is  defence.  The 
individual  has  to  be  defended  from  a  situation 
that  he  conceives  as  intolerable.  The  symp- 
toms of  the  corporal  are  manufactured  for  a 
definite  and  imperative  though  entirely  un- 
conscious reason:  he  has  got  to  be  preserved 
from  going  back  to  the  trenches.  But  this  is 
not  all.  The  neurosis  has  a  second,  immensely 
important,  function :  it  has  to  defend  the  indi- 
vidual from  his  own  self-criticism;  to  con- 
vince him  that  he  is  not  violating  his  accepted 
principles.  The  second  function  of  every 
neurosis  is  deception.  The  corporal  must  still 
be  blinded  to  his  own  fear.  He  must  be  de- 
ceived into  thinking  that  his  attitude  is  really 
that  of  the  sergeant,  and  that  it  is  only  his 
"  nerves  "  that  stand  in  his  way.  Neurosis  is 
the  perfect  instrument  of  compromise. 

It  is  a  singularly  blind  judgment  that  would 
advance  from  the  consideration  of  these  facts 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  corporal  is  only  a 
malingerer  after  all;  and  that  all  he  needs 
is  to  be  told  to  pull  himself  together  and  go 
back  to  France.  Uncomprehending  censure 
and  sentimental  sympathy  are  equally  in- 
appropriate in  his  condition;  but  this  is 
not  the  final  situation.  When  his  case  has 
been  analysed,  when  he  has  been  put  in  touch 
128 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

with  the  facts  of  his  own  mental  life,  when  he 
has  learnt  to  recognize  his  conflict  and  to  face 
it  in  consciousness — then  he  can  no  longer 
remain  the  corporal,  the  compromise  type: 
he  has  to  make  an  ethical  decision,  and  identify 
himself  either  with  the  sergeant  or  with  the 
private.  There  were  men  in  this  position 
who  made  their  ethical  adjustment,  and  they 
had  one's  whole-hearted  admiration;  there 
were  others  who  did  not,  and  it  was  difficult  to 
blame  them. 

The  case  of  the  corporal  has  been  chosen  to 
show  in  simple  and  diagrammatic  outline  the 
primary  principle  of  the  unconscious  motive 
at  work.  It  is  not  intended  as  a  conclusive 
statement  on  war-neuroses. 

The  aim  of  psycho-analysis,  stated  in  the 
briefest  and  crudest  terms,  is  to  reveal  to  the 
individual,  from  his  own  experience,  the  un- 
conscious motive  that  is  at  work  in  producing 
his  neuroses.  This  is  its  primary  concern; 
and  much  of  the  ill-repute  which  it  has  gained 
has  been  due  to  unnecessary  emphasis  on  sec- 
ondary points.  This  is  the  real  focus,  not  only 
of  its  therapeutic  work,  but  of  its  whole  con- 
tribution to  social,  religious  and  educational 
problems.  The  same  mental  mechanism  which 
is  at  work  in  the  individual  is  at  work  in  the 
129 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

community.  It  is  responsible  for  many  myste- 
rious barriers  to  social  progress.1  No  one 
erected  them;  everyone  would  be  glad  to  be 
free  of  them,  and  to  go  on  to  better  things ;  but 
they  exist  and  remain,  exerting  an  impersonal 
force,  which  seems  to  defy  interference.  The 
mechanism  of  defence  and  deception  enables 
us  to  deplore  results  and  disclaim  responsibil- 
ity. When  a  society  over-emphasizes  in  its 
conscious  life  the  material  and  the  primitive 
impulses,  then  the  incalculable  factor  may  be 
of  the  opposite  kind ;  and  there  appear  sudden 
revivals  and  spiritual  movements,  which  seem 
equally  independent  of  human  will  and 
purpose. 

Both  in  the  individual  and  in  the  social 
sphere  the  outlook  of  analytical-psychology 
is  tending  to  enlarge  the  field  of  consciousness 
and  of  responsibility.  The  neurotic  patient 
feels  himself  the  victim  of  circumstances.  His 
obsessions,  phobiae,  compulsions,  inertia  or 
physical  symptoms:  his  neurosis,  whatever 
form  it  takes,  means  to  him  a  loss  of  freedom 
and  of  happiness;  and  this  in  itself  proves  to 

xThis  idea  is  suggestively  treated  by  Miss   M.  K. 
Bradby  in  both  her  books:  Psycho-analysis  and  its  Place 
in  Life,  and  The  Logic  of  the  Unconscious  Mind.    Ox- 
ford Medical  Publications.    Hodder  &  Stoughton. 
130 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

him  that  it  is  something  that  has  come  upon 
him  against  his  will.  It  is  only  as  he  is 
brought  to  recognize  the  parts  of  his  expe- 
rience and  the  dynamics  of  his  life  with  which 
he  has  lost  contact,  that  he  comes  to  realize 
that  his  problem  lies  within  his  own  person- 
ality. Until  he  is  thus  re-associated,  he  can 
make  no  secure  adjustment  to  the  demands  of 
life.  It  is  by  something  more  than  a  suggestive 
analogy  that  we  find  the  parallel  to  this  in  the 
life  of  a  nation.1  There  is  the  same  tendency 
to  repress  and  to  ignore  certain  of  the  conflict- 
ing forces  in  society,  and  for  these  forces  to 
gather  power  in  the  unconscious,  and  to  exert 
an  unrecognized  and  incalculable  influence 
upon  public  affairs,  producing  all  the  phe- 
nomena of  compulsion,  fear  and  inertia,  which 
hinder  free  action.  They  pass  thus  to  the  final 
stage,  in  which  they  are  credited  with  an  inde- 
pendent and  highly  concentrated  existence. 
They  are  either  deified  as  laws  of  life  and  force 
of  circumstance,  or  personified  in  some  notori- 
ous leader;  or  identified  with  a  particular 
nation,  party,  or  creed,  a  hidden  hand,  a  mur- 

1  "  Or  do  you  imagine  that  constitutions  grow  upon 
a  tree  or  rock,  instead  of  springing  out  of  the  moral  dis- 
positions of  the  members  of  each  state  ?"  Plato,  Republic. 
VIII.  544- 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

der  gang,  or  an  international  plot.  The  ten- 
dency to  externalize  and  objectify  a  problem 
is  a  characteristic  of  primitive  thinking,  and 
it  is  anachronism  to  which  there  is  a  constant 
temptation  to  return.  Analytical-psychology 
re-affirms  the  view  that  the  most  vital  forces 
that  influence  human  life  enter  it  on  the  deeper 
levels,  and  are  not  imposed  from  without.  The 
conception  of  the  unconscious  that  is  implied 
in  this  view  is  outlined  briefly  in  the  next 
chapter.  Enough  has  been  said  to  indicate  the 
direction  in  which  the  new  psychology  is  tend- 
ing to  enlarge  the  sphere  of  responsibility.  It 
is  encroaching  on  the  territory  of  determinism 
in  two  directions.  On  the  one  hand  it  shows 
that  certain  of  the  so-called  "blind"  forces 
which  act  destructively  in  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual and  of  the  community,  can  be  brought 
into  relation  with  conscious  control.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  discredits  that  type  of  spiritual 
determinism  which  under-estimates  the  indi- 
vidual's own  part  in  the  discovery  of  truth 
and  moral  good,  and  makes  him  dependent  on 
an  external  authority  and  a  magical  solution. 
Both  the  depths  and  the  heights  of  human 
achievement  are  the  expression  of  a  purpose 
and  a  will  that  is  an  integral  part  of  man's 
mind,  although  it  be  no  part  of  his  conscious- 
ness : — 

132 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

"Our  towns  are  copied  fragments  from  our  breast ; 
And  all  man's  Babylons  strive  but  to  impart 
The  grandeurs  of  his  Babylonian  heart."  1 

It  was  said  that  the  unconscious  motive, 
producing  a  neurosis,  was  invariably  acting 
as  a  defence.  In  the  case  that  was  given,  the 
corporal  was  being  defended  from  having  to 
risk  his  life  in  the  trenches.  If  his  situation 
be  translated  into  the  more  ordinary  condi- 
tions of  peace-time,  what  demand  for  defence 
is  there?  Speaking  in  the  most  general  terms, 
it  is  the  tendency  of  the  neuropath  to  defend 
himself  against  progress.  One  man's 
"trenches"  have  no  terrors  for  another.  The 
challenge  of  life  asks  different  things  of  each 
individual.  It  may  be  marriage  or  celibacy, 
staying  at  home  or  going  abroad,  self-asser- 
tion or  self-effacement:  the  problem  takes 
countless  different  forms.  Often  the  intol- 
erable situation  against  which  the  neurosis  is  a 
defence  appears  outwardly  harmless  and 
pleasant;  and  the  victim  of  the  neurosis  ac- 
cepts other  people's  estimate  of  it,  and  is  en- 
tirely unaware  of  his  own  resistance  and  fear. 
In  general,  however,  these  varied  problems 
can  be  reduced  to  simple  terms  of  the  choice 
between  growing  up  and  remaining  children : 

1  Correlated   Greatness.      Francis   Thompson. 
133 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

the  choice  between  a  progressive  and  a  regres- 
sive reaction  to  life.  In  so  far  as  progress 
means  self-help,  and  in  so  far  as  self-help  is 
incompatible  with  self-pity,  it  is  obvious  that 
the  neurosis  which  gives  an  opportunity  to 
self-pity  is  an  effective  barrier  to  progress.  If 
a  girl  finds  that  she  is  not  adequately  appre- 
ciated, and  that  her  social  gifts  or  talents  are 
not  sufficient  to  make  her  the  centre  of  atten- 
tion, she  sometimes  tends  to  develop  a  neu- 
rosis :  it  may  take  the  form  of  headache  and 
fatigue,  or  it  may  be  something  much  more 
marked;  stammering,  or  fits,  or  asthma.  In 
the  latter  cases,  any  attempt  to  connect  her 
symptoms  with  her  mental  attitude  is  naturally 
resented  as  being  heartless  and  irrelevant. 
"She  could  not  wish  to  have  asthma  like 
that,"  her  mother  will  say;  "If  you  saw  her 
sitting  up  wheezing  all  night,  you  would  not 
for  a  moment  believe  that  anyone  could  wish 
such  a  thing."  In  a  sense  this  is  perfectly 
true;  and  yet  it  is  not  the  whole  truth;  for  if 
there  is  anything  clearly  proved  by  analytical- 
psychology  it  is  this:  that  the  great  funda- 
mental emotions  of  self-regard  and  self-pity 
will  carry  people  to  lengths  hitherto  undreamt 
of  in  the  way  of  physical  suffering;  and  that 
those  who  cannot  get  the  limelight  by  ordinary 
means  will  wheeze  for  nights,  and  endure 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

incredible  discomfort  and  martyrdom  to  sat- 
isfy their  desire  for  distinction.  It  is  tempt- 
ing to  pass  from  the  first  discovery  of  this 
principle  to  rapid  and  superficial  conclusions 
about  other  people's  neuroses,  and  to  regard 
them  with  a  certain  contempt.  The  tempta- 
tion to  adopt  the  attitude  of  patronage  de- 
creases with  further  insight  into  the  psycho- 
logical problems  of  other  people,  and  more 
intimate  and  humiliating  experience  of  the 
unconscious  motive  in  oneself.  The  follow- 
ing examples  are  chosen  as  concrete  and 
simple  illustrations  of  what  has  been  said  of 
the  operation  of  the  unconscious  motive 
through  neurosis. 

The  first  is  the  case  of  a  corporal  (in  both 
senses  of  the  word)  who  was  serving  in  Egypt, 
and  was  brought  to  the  writer,  suffering  from 
insomnia  and  pains  in  the  head.  After  a  time 
I  said  to  him  that  I  supposed  that,  like  the 
rest  of  us,  he  would  not  be  sorry  if  he  were 
sent  home.  He  replied  with  every  appear- 
ance of  sincerity  that  he  did  not  want  this. 
He  had  come  out  with  his  own  unit,  and  he 
wanted  to  stick  to  them;  he  thought  that  if 
he  did  get  home,  it  would  only  be  on  the  way 
to  France,  and  he  was  better  off  where  he  was. 
I  was  completely  convinced  by  him.  On  the 
following  day  I  hypnotized  him  (he  happened 
135 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

to  be  a  very  easy  subject),  and  asked  him 
what  he  wished  for  most  in  the  world.  He 
was  told  to  write  the  answer.  The  usual 
trembling  handwriting  appeared :  but  it  was 
perfectly  legible.  He  had  written  the  words: 
"Leave Egypt"  His  conscious  attitude,  repre- 
senting his  ideal  ego,  was  that  of  the  yeoman 
in  the  desert.  When  he  was  shown  the 
writing  he  could  not  believe  that  it  was  his 
own.  It  remained  as  the  incontrovertible  evi- 
dence of  his  repression.  And  when  his  case 
was  examined  further,  it  was  found  how  much 
of  himself  had  had  to  be  repressed.  He  was  a 
man  of  the  clerk  type,  and  musical  and  artistic. 
He  was  not  a  man  of  war.  While  his  con- 
scious self  clung  to  Egypt  and  his  unit,  his 
unconscious  was  calling  him  back  to  his 
mother  and  to  Tooting.  It  would  have  done 
him  no  good  to  be  told  this  without  evidence. 
What  did  do  him  good  was  to  be  shown  the 
proof  that  came  from  within  himself  in  this 
unusually  simple  and  direct  manner.  Through 
it,  he  was  able  to  begin  to  get  into  contact  with 
his  own  mind,  and  to  understand  why  his  ad- 
justment had  broken  down. 

The  second  case  is  that  of  a  lady  suffering 
from  insomnia.  She  was  about  thirty,  and 
had  been  married  for  four  or  five  years.  She 
had  one  child,  a  girl,  who  was  about  three 

136 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

years  old.  She  was  in  good  health,  and  could 
not  account  for  her  insomnia  in  any  way.  Fur- 
ther questioning  revealed  the  following  situa- 
tion. She  had  had  an  exceedingly  serious 
time  with  her  first  confinement,  and  it  had 
been  a  very  terrifying  experience.  She  had 
had  some  insomnia  after  it,  and  the  titled  con- 
sultant who  was  called  in  had  given  it  as  his 
opinion  that  there  must  be  no  question  of 
another  child  until  the  insomnia  was  cured. 
It  happened  that  there  was  an  old  peerage 
involved :  and  as  the  first  child  was  a  girl,  it 
was  necessary  to  face  the  prospect  of  a  second 
confinement  for  the  sake  of  having  an  heir. 
The  compromise  with  the  unconscious  motive 
of  fear  was  brought  about  by  the  continuance 
of  her  insomnia :  for  had  not  the  great  special- 
ist said  that  until  this  was  cured  there  must 
be  no  thought  of  an  heir?  When  it  was  ex- 
plained to  her  that  she  was  unconsciously  de- 
fending herself  thus  from  her  "trenches,"  she 
was  very  indignant;  and  the  prophecy  that  her 
insomnia  would  cease  as  soon  as  an  heir  was 
on  the  way  was  very  coldly  received.  Not 
very  long  afterwards,  however,  she  wrote  to 
say  that  it  had  been  fulfilled;  and  subse- 
quently the  heir  arrived. 

A  more  complex  situation  was  found  to  un- 
derlie   the    continuance    of    a    symptom    in 
137 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

another  case.  It  was  that  of  a  lady  with  bad 
tonsilitis.  She  was  brought  into  a  nursing 
home,  and  had  her  tonsils  removed.  Her  de- 
voted husband,  who  was  a  good  deal  older 
than  she  was,  did  everything  that  he  could 
think  of  to  add  to  her  comfort.  In  order  to 
stimulate  her  recovery,  he  bethought  him  of 
a  plan,  which  should  prove  immensely  at- 
tractive to  her.  He  proposed  that  as  soon  as 
she  was  better,  they  should  go  off  to  Paris,  and 
stay  with  a  certain  Mademoiselle  X.  It  was 
all  arranged,  and  she  must  get  well  quickly. 
But  the  patient  only  got  worse.  Specialists 
and  consultants  could  find  no  adequate  phys- 
ical cause  for  her  condition,  and  at  last  she 
had  recourse  to  psychotherapy.  The  explana- 
tion of  her  inability  to  get  well  was  as  fol- 
lows :  Many  years  ago  there  had  been  a  great 
friendship  between  the  patient  and  Made- 
moiselle X.,  a  certain  French  musician.  The 
patient  was  herself  musical  and  erotic;  she 
was  enthralled  and  captivated  by  Made- 
moiselle X.,  and  a  homo-sexual  attachment 
grew  up  between  them.  At  length  it  dawned 
upon  her  husband  that  this  friendship  had 
reached  a  point  at  which  it  was  impossible  for 
him  to  approve  of  it;  and  he  turned  Made- 
moiselle X.  out  of  the  house.  The  intimacy 
was  entirely  broken  off,  and  though  there  was 

138 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

some  soreness  at  the  time,  the  patient  after- 
wards thought  of  Mademoiselle  X.  with  dis- 
gust and  remorse  and  real  loathing.  During 
her  illness,  the  husband,  casting  around  for 
something  that  should  gratify  her,  determined 
that  she  should  be  invited  by  him  to  see  her 
friend  again,  as  a  sign  of  his  complete  forgive- 
ness and  confidence  that  the  whole  episode 
could  be  safely  forgotten.  The  wife  was 
aware  that  she  could  not  face  the  affair  with 
anything  like  detachment.  The  plan  which 
was  to  have  given  her  a  motive  for  recovery 
had  exactly  the  opposite  effect.  A  neurosis 
often  means  the  choice  of  physical  suffering 
instead  of  mental  suffering;  and  in  this  case 
the  lady  had  unconsciously  preferred  the  con- 
tinuance of  her  symptoms  to  the  facing  of  a 
painful  emotional  situation. 

The  last  case  is  that  of  a  man  of  rather  wild 
business  methods,  who  was  in  the  habit  of 
speculating — not  always  with  his  own  money. 
He  was  enjoying  a  lively  Christmas  holiday 
at  Southport,  when  on  New  Year's  Day  he 
received  a  telegram  from  his  office  to  say  that 
his  investments  had  collapsed,  and  that  he 
must  return  to  town  at  once,  and  face  the  situa- 
tion. (It  involved  bankruptcy.)  He  took  the 
first  train  to  Liverpool,  and  was  waiting  at 
Lime  Street  for  the  London  express.  When 
139 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

it  came,  he  could  not  get  into  it.  He  let  it  go, 
and  waited  for  the  next  train.  This  was  no 
better.  He  walked  along  it  from  the  engine 
to  the  guard's  van,  and  there  was  no  point 
at  which  he  could  persuade  himself  to  set  foot 
in  it.  The  last  train  at  night  he  did  get  into 
with  a  supreme  effort,  and  so  got  to  town, 
much  later  than  he  was  expected,  and  faced 
the  unpleasant  realities  of  the  situation.  But 
his  neurosis  pursued  him.  He  could  not  travel 
on  the  underground;  or  rather,  he  could  only 
do  so  if  he  got  in  and  out  at  one  of  three  sta- 
tions, not  one  of  which  was  any  use  to  him, 
either  for  his  business  or  his  home.  The  orig- 
inal cause  of  the  neurosis  was  so  obvious  and 
transparent  that  it  could  hardly  have  cheated 
anybody:  it  was  just  a  defence  against  the  fear 
of  facing  the  auditor  and  his  own  books.  But 
this  ordeal  had  to  be  gone  through :  in  time  it 
was  all  over,  and  he  could  start  again;  and 
yet  the  train-phobia  remained  with  him — for 
what  purpose?  It  remained  as  a  defence 
against  his  own  self-criticism,  to  conceal  him 
from  the  real  facts  of  his  failure  to  arrive 
promptly  on  the  day  of  the  crisis.  If  it  had 
disappeared  after  this  occasion,  he  would 
have  had  to  face  his  own  moral  cowardice 
without  deception.  As  it  was,  he  was  able  to 
regard  himself  as  the  victim  of  "nerves," 
140 


The  Unconscious  Motive 

which  so  far  from  being  of  any  use  to  him, 
were  simply  a  hindrance  to  his  desire  to  get 
on  with  his  work.  He  was  obliged  to  go  to 
his  office  by  taxi,  and  he  was  accompanied  by 
his  wife.  In  his  refusal  to  face  the  demands 
of  life,  he  was  regressing  to  the  position  of 
dependence  on  the  mother. 

The  conception  of  the  unconscious  motive^ 
producing  the  neurosis  as  a  defence  against 
progress  must  be  related  to  the  whole  question 
of  the  emotional  development  of  the  boy  and 
girl.  The  neuroses  of  childhood  and  adoles- 
cence bear  witness  to  the  fact  that  the  menace 
of  growing  up  is  a  very  much  more  real  thing 
than  many  of  us  remember  or  ever  recognized. 
Few  of  us  have  the  genius  of  a  Stevenson  to 
recapture  at  will  the  outlook  of  youth,  and 
to  see  its  fears  and  embarrassments  in  their 
original  dimensions.  We  may,  however,  gain 
some  insight  into  these  difficulties  by  the  ex- 
perience of  conflict  with  our  own  incurable 
puerility,  the  unconscious  motive  of  regres- 
sion, which  continually  seeks  to  defend  us 
from  the  intolerable  situation,  and  to  cheat 
us  into  the  belief  that  we  are  not  really 
shirking. 


141 


CHAPTER  VII 
MENTAL  MECHANISMS 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  TYPES: 

The  introvert  and  the  extravert. 

THE  UNCONSCIOUS: 

The  Conceptions  of  Freud  and  of  Jung. 
The  Censor. 

MENTAL  MECHANISMS: 

Repression  and  suppression. 

Complex-formation. 

Transference  of  the  affect. 

Sublimation. 

Compensation. 

Projection. 

Rationalization. 

REGRESSION. 


MENTAL  MECHANISMS 

T?OR  practical  purposes  it  is  well  to  be 
™  familiar  with  the  conception  of  the  two 
main  psychological  types,  distinguished  by 
Jung,  in  his  original  classification :  namely, 
those  of  the  introvert  and  the  extravert.  It  is 
obvious  that  any  distinction  of  this  kind  is  no 
more  than  a  rough  division;  there  are  many 
intermediate  types;  but  even  so,  it  is  useful 
to  recognize  the  two  different  strains  in  the 
mental  make-up. 

The  extravert  type  is  characterized  by  self- 
confidence,  usually  in  excess  of  what  is  justifi- 
able, and  by  facility  of  self-expression.  The 
extravert  is  self-seeking  in  the  broadest  sense 
of  the  word;  that  is  to  say,  he  is  not  neces- 
sarily seeking  his  own  ends  selfishly,  but  he 
is  anxious  to  feel  the  effect  of  his  actions  and 
ideas  upon  other  people.  To  this  type  belong 
the  propagandists  of  the  world,  the  people 
who  desire  to  see  the  rest  of  mankind  sharing 
their  particular  views.  To  this  type  also 
belong  all  successful  commercial  travellers 
and  auctioneers,  men  and  women  with  the 
objective  outlook  and  the  strong  practical 
H5 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

initiative  that  gets  things  done.  The  intro- 
vert is  of  the  opposite  type.  He  is  apt  to  be 
unduly  lacking  in  self-confidence  and  in  the 
power  to  express  himself;  ready  to  think, 
rather  than  to  act;  unwilling  to  push  himself 
forward.  He  is  generally  content  to  be  aloof 
and  detached;  to  experience  sympathy  and 
pity  for  the  world  that  does  not  share  his 
views,  without  making  any  attempt  to  remedy 
the  disaster.  An  emotional  situation  which 
stimulates  the  extravert  depresses  the  intro- 
vert :  he  does  not  know  how  to  express  his  feel- 
ings, and  so  tries  to  ignore  them.  The  two 
types  are  clearly  distinguished  also  by  their 
reaction  to  the  limelight:  the  extravert  is  in- 
variably attracted  by  it,  and  responds  to  its 
stimulus;  the  introvert  as  invariably  shuns  it, 
and  is  at  his  best  when  he  is  protected  from  it. 
Their  reaction  to  opportunity  is  also  char- 
acteristic: to  the  introvert  it  presents  itself 
first  as  responsibility;  to  the  extravert  as  a 
chance  of  scope.  It  is  only  on  second  thoughts 
that  the  introvert  realizes  that  the  post  that 
has  been  offered  him  does  present  possibilities 
of  scope  for  his  powers,  and  the  extravert  be- 
comes apprehensive  about  the  burden  of  its 
responsibilities.  Jung  has  more  recently  re- 
placed this  classification  by  another  based  on 
the  four  functions  of  feeling,  thinking,  intui- 
146 


Mental  Mechanisms 

tion  and  sensation.  He  has  boldly  made  use 
of  the  word  "function,"  despite  its  unpopu- 
larity with  the  modern  psychologist. 

He  distinguishes  thus  the  rational,  logical 
type:  the  impulsive,  rash,  enthusiastic  feeling 
type:  the  intuitive  type,  arriving  at  conclu- 
sions often  with  far  greater  certainty  than  the 
thinker,  but  on  the  most  slender  logical 
grounds:  and  the  sensational  type,  always 
craving  for  stimulus  to  the  sensory  experience 
— the  cigarette-smoking,  chocolate-eating, 
cocktail-drinking  type,  that  is  responsible 
for  much  of  the  alcoholism  in  the  coun- 
try. This  classification  is  valuable ;  but  it  does 
not  detract  from  the  usefulness  of  the  simpler 
division  into  the  two  types.  The  latter  is  par- 
ticularly important  in  dealing  with  children, 
for  two  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  extraver- 
sion  is  characteristic  of  normal  childhood. 
The  process  of  development  should  include  a 
gradual  transition  to  introversion.  It  is  im- 
portant to  realize  that  there  is  something 
wrong  with  the  small  child  who  is  unduly 
introverted,  and  lacks  facility  for  self-expres- 
sion; and  something  wrong  also  with  the  ado- 
lescent and  the  adult  who  have  made  no  prog- 
ress to  the  development  of  the  thought-life, 
who  are  regressing  to  the  more  infantile  state 
of  conduct  and  expression.  Secondly,  along- 
147 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

side  of  this  general  distinction  between  the  ex- 
traversion  characteristic  of  childhood,  and  the 
more  introverted  attitude  of  maturity,  the  in- 
dividual tendency  of  the  child  has  to  be  con- 
sidered. The  predominantly  introvert  or  ex- 
travert  type  can  be  distinguished  in  very  early 
childhood;  and  it  should  be  part  of  the  func- 
tion of  education  to  help  the  individual  to 
develop  that  side  of  himself  which  is  naturally 
the  weaker.  The  two  types  require  very  dif- 
ferent handling;  and  much  harm  can  be  done 
by  making  the  way  of  self-expression  too  hard 
for  the  introvert  child,  or  encouraging  the  ex- 
travert  to  over-facility  and  display. 

It  may  be  well  at  this  point  to  draw  atten- 
tion to  the  double  meaning  of  self-conscious- 
ness in  children.  It  may  be  congenital:  the 
natural  reaction  to  life  of  the  primary  sen- 
sitive type.  In  this  case  it  will  be  continuously 
present  from  a  very  early  age.  It  may,  on  the 
other  hand,  be  acquired.  The  self-conscious- 
ness that  suddenly  appears  in  the  child  of  five 
or  six  has  a  perfectly  definite  cause,  and  is 
recognizable  as  the  typical  result  of  a  shame- 
complex  based  on  auto-erotic  practices.  The 
phenomena  of  self-consciousness  are  much  the 
same  in  the  two  cases ;  but  the  underlying  dis- 
tinction is  fundamental. 

We  pass  from  this  to  consider  very  briefly 
148 


Mental  Mechanisms 

some  of  the  most  important  mental  mechan- 
isms that  have  been  recognized  by  modern 
psychology.  The  reader  should  perhaps  be 
reminded  that  these  mechanisms  are  purely 
conceptual:  they  are  psychological  assump- 
tions which  have  been  found  necessary  to  ex- 
plain and  to  correlate  certain  facts  of  mental 
experience;  but  they  cannot  be  directly  ob- 
served as  mental  phenomena,  and  they  are 
perfectly  distinct  from  any  physiological 
mechanism  of  the  brain.1 

The  most  important  of  these  conceptions  is 
that  of  the  unconscious.  On  this  point  the 
views  of  Freud  and  Jung  are  irreconcilable. 
The  unconscious  is  conceived  by  Freud  as  sec- 
ondary and  personal :  a  store-room,  whose  con- 
tent is  recruited  from  the  individual's  own 
experience.  This  experience  includes  the 
ante-natal  life,  which  is  responsible  for  the 
first  storing  of  the  unconscious.  This  assump- 
tion is  made  to  cover  the  fact  that  children 
dream  at  an  early  age  of  sexual  phenomena  of 
which  they  cannot  have  had  any  conscious 
experience.  In  a  criticism  of  the  original 
Freudian  view,  Dr.  Maurice  Nicoll  has  sum- 
marized it  by  saying  that  "this  kind  of  uncon- 
scious is  like  a  cage  opening  off  the  main  liv- 

1  For  this  distinction  see  Bernard  Hart :  The  Psychol- 
ogy of  Insanity.    Cambridge  University  Press,    p.  16  ff. 
149 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

ing-room  of  consciousness  into  which  we  put 
the  things  that  have  become  dangerous." 1 
The  unconscious  is  secondary,  in  that  it  con- 
tains material,  all  of  which  has  once  been  a 
part  of  experience:  it  is  the  product  of  re- 
pression. 

To  Jung,  the  unconscious  is  primary  and 
racial.  He  conceives  of  it  as  partially  stored 
with  material  which  is  hereditary.  This  col- 
lective unconscious  is  expressed  in  racial  sym- 
bols, folk-lore  and  myth-making  tendencies, 
which  are  common  to  mankind.  The  original 
racial  content  is  added  to  by  repression  and 
the  other  mental  mechanisms  which  control 
the  selection  and  limitation  of  the  contents 
of  the  conscious  mind.  On  this  view  the 
unconscious  is  conceived  primarily  as  the 
source  of  psychic  energy.  In  the  relation  be- 
tween the  conscious  and  the  unconscious,  the 
chief  dynamic  is  an  upward  movement:  the 
emergence  of  fresh  material  from  deeper 
levels  of  the  psyche.  On  the  Freudian  view 
the  chief  dynamic  appears  to  be  regarded 
rather  as  a  downward  push  from  conscious- 
ness, followed  by  the  inevitable  impulse  of 

1  Why  K  the  "  Unconscious  "  unconscious?     Contri- 
bution to  a  Symposium  at  a  Joint  Session  of  the  British 
Psychological  Society,  the  Aristotelian  Society  and  the 
Mind  Association,  July  6,  1918. 
150 


Mental  Mechanisms 

reaction,  the  tendency  of  the  repressed  ma- 
terial to  reappear  in  consciousness. 

The  two  schools  differ  thus  radically  in  the 
view  they  take  of  the  way  in  which  the  con- 
tent of  the  unconscious  is  formed ;  they  differ 
no  less  in  the  conception  of  its  quality.  To 
the  Freudian  school  the  unconscious  material 
is  necessarily  that  which  is  antagonistic  to 
conscious  thought,  and  opposed  to  ethical  and 
social  ideals.  It  is  the  force  of  primitive 
desire,  the  menagerie  of  wild  beasts  which 
have  to  be  kept  from  contact  with  the  more 
civilized  life  of  consciousness.  The  opposing 
forces  of  morality  and  social  restraint  have 
no  stronghold  in  the  unconscious;  but  belong 
to  the  conscious  and  acquired  tradition  of 
man.  The  Zurich  school  conceives  of  the  un- 
conscious as  containing  in  itself  both  elements, 
the  primitive  and  bestial  and  the  sublime  and 
godlike.  It  finds  the  human  conflict  inborn 
in  the  deepest  recesses  of  the  psyche.  One  of 
the  implications  of  this  view  may  be  crudely 
represented  by  a  diagram,  in  which  the  con- 
tents of  the  mind  are  arranged  conceptually 
on  a  scale.  At  one  end  of  the  scale  are  the 
heroic  and  sublime  elements,  and  at  the  other 
the  primitive  and  bestial.  A  curved  line  rep- 
resents the  threshold  of  consciousness.  The 
ideas  that  belong  to  the  extreme  ends  of  the 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

scale  meet  with  a  strong  resistance  to  their 
entry  into  consciousness.  The  resistance  is 
at  its  lowest  in  the  middle  of  the  scale  to 
which  belong  neutral  ideas;  ordinary  interests 
of  work  and  play,  clothes  and  holidays,  people 
and  things  that  arouse  no  mental  conflict. 
These  may  sink  down  into  the  unconscious, 
but  they  can  be  easily  recalled.  This  is  not 
so  with  the  ideas  that  are  fraught  with  poten- 
tial conflict.  There  is  a  strong  and  automatic 
resistance  to  their  emergence  into  conscious- 


Primrfnv 


GotfMeaact 


ness.  Our  primitive  biological  tendencies, 
our  sex  life  in  particular,  meets  with  this 
opposition.  It  is  too  highly  charged  with 
emotion  and  with  the  possibilities  of  conflict 
for  it  to  appear  freely  above  the  threshold  of 
consciousness.  This  truth  has  been  strongly 
emphasized  in  psycho-analysis.  The  corre- 
sponding truth  implied  in  Jung's  conception 
of  the  twofold  nature  of  the  unconscious  is  less 
generally  recognized.  It  is  that  the  opposi- 
tion is  equally  strong  at  the  other  end  of  the 
scale.  The  ideas  that  are  associated  with  the 
152 


Mental  Mechanisms 

highest  adjustment  to  the  ideal,  the  greatest 
challenge  to  growth  and  spirituality,  also  meet 
with  resistance.  The  same  mechanism  with- 
holds them  from  the  easy  entry  into  conscious- 
ness. It  is  obvious  that  the  difference  between 
the  two  conceptions  of  the  unconscious  has 
far-reaching  implications,  which  affect  the 
whole  psychological  outlook. 

The  Freudian  psychology  postulates  the 
existence  of  a  censor,  who  checks  the  material 
that  passes  from  the  unconscious  to  the 
conscious.  The  personal  pronoun  is  used 
advisedly;  in  all  systems  of  psychology  and 
philosophy  which  de-personalize  the  ego 
there  is  a  tendency  to  attribute  personality  to 
something  else.  Freud  now  conceives  that 
there  are  two  censors,  and  both  appear  to  the 
writer  to  perform  a  strictly  personal  function 
within  the  impersonal  ego  of  a  deterministic 
theory.  Jung  has  discounted  the  function  of 
the  censor,  and  is  not  a  determinist;  but  he 
seems  to  attribute  free-will  to  the  conscious 
self  rather  grudgingly,  and  tends  rather  to 
personify  the  unconscious. 

In  the  previous  chapter  l  a  reference  was 
made  to  the  tendency  to  evade  conflict  by 
repression,  or  suppression.  The  latter  term 
is  usually  applied  to  the  conscious,  and  the 

1  v.  supra,  p.  127. 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

former  to  the  automatic  part  of  the  process 
of  excluding  an  idea  from  consciousness. 
Repression  often  presupposes  a  moment  of 
time,  however  brief,  in  which  the  unwelcome 
idea  is  voluntarily  thrust  away  from  attention, 
and  the  element  of  deliberate  volition  may 
from  time  to  time  be  present  again.  More 
frequently  it  is  entirely  absent.  The  idea  that 
has  become  painful  to  the  conscious  mind  is 
surrounded  by  a  group  of  kindred  ideas :  it  is 
the  centre  of  a  constellation.  In  the  example 
that  was  given  in  the  last  chapter  it  may  be 
supposed  that  the  central  idea  of  the  fear  of 
death  was  surrounded  in  the  corporal's  mind 
by  various  associations  and  mental  pictures: 
stories  of  suffering  and  mutilation,  ideas  about 
imprisonment  and  hunger  and  disease.  For  a 
brief  space  these  produced  a  mental  disposi- 
tion or  constellation  of  ideas  in  his  conscious 
mind;  and  then  they  were  ignored.  The 
group  of  ideas  continued  to  exist  in  his  uncon- 
scious, forming  what  is  known  as  a  complex. 
While  it  was  possible  for  the  corporal  to  re- 
press all  direct  thoughts  of  his  fear,  it  was 
inevitable  that  he  should  come  in  contact  with 
some  of  the  kindred  ideas  that  were  associated 
with  it.  However  remote  the  connexion, 
these  ideas  would  be  coloured  with  the  feel- 
ing-tone of  the  repressed  complex,  and  he 
154 


Mental  Mechanisms 

would  be  unable  to  think  of  them  without  an 
emotional  reaction  that  was  out  of  proportion 
to  their  ordinary  significance.  It  is  a  very 
common  observation  of  everyday  life  to  notice 
that  things  which  appear  of  slight  impor- 
tance may  provoke  a  disproportionate  amount 
of  emotion.  It  is  these  subjects  on  which  we 
are  "touchy"  that  indicate  complexes.  They 
are  the  occasion  of  a  release  of  repressed  emo- 
tion. This  mental  mechanism  lies  at  the  root 
of  all  bias,  all  injustice,  and  all  inability  to 
think  clearly. 

There  is  a  second  mechanism  that  belongs 
to  the  process  of  repression.  The  emotion 
which  accumulates  in  connexion  with  the  re- 
pressed complex  tends  to  escape  into  con- 
sciousness. The  direct  outlet  is  barred  by 
repression.  The  emotional  effect  may  find  its 
way  through  some  of  the  ideas  which  lie  as 
it  were  on  the  fringe  of  the  complex,  in  the 
way  that  has  been  described;  but  this  is  an 
inadequate  outlet.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, there  is  a  tendency  for  it  to  travel  yet 
farther  from  the  original  idea,  and  to  make 
its  way  into  consciousness  by  becoming  at- 
tached to  some  apparently  irrelevant  object. 
This  mechanism  of  the  transference  of  the 
affect  can  be  made  clear  by  an  example. 

In  1915  a  patient  came  to  me  suffering  from 
155 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

an  irrational  anxiety  about  all  that  concerned 
her  children.  They  were  hedged  in  with  the 
most  elaborate  precautions  and  restrictions. 
The  patient  realized  that  her  behaviour  with 
regard  to  them  was  quite  unreasonable,  but 
she  was  unable  to  alter  it.  The  children  were 
perfectly  healthy  and  normal,  and  presented 
no  cause  for  anxiety.  After  getting  her  con- 
scious estimate  of  this  part  of  her  situation,  I 
inquired  about  her  husband.  He  was  a 
colonel  in  a  front-line  regiment.  I  sym- 
pathized with  her  anxious  position.  She  re- 
plied at  once  that  she  was  not  in  the  least 
anxious :  she  had  a  presentiment  that  he  would 
come  back  all  right.  In  1915  such  presenti- 
ments were  hardly  plausible.  What  had  hap- 
pened was  that  she  had  found  herself  totally 
unable  to  face  the  possibility  of  his  death ;  it 
was  unendurable,  and  she  thrust  it  out  of  con- 
sciousness, making  a  false  adjustment  to  the 
situation  on  the  basis  of  phantasy:  the  "pre- 
sentiment" that  he  would  come  back  all  right. 
From  this  repression  the  affect  of  anxiety  was 
transferred  to  an  irrelevant  object:  it  attached 
itself  to  the  idea  of  her  children.  Events  con- 
firmed this  diagnosis.  Ten  days  later  the  hus- 
band was  killed,  and  from  that  moment  the 
neurosis  disappeared.  The  repression  was  at 
an  end;  the  intolerable  possibility  which  she 


Mental  Mechanisms 

had  been  evading  had  become  a  reality  with 
which  she  was  obliged  to  come  into  contact. 
The  mental  mechanisms  which  have  been 
described  represent  the  analytical  view  of  re- 
pression and  complex-formation.  It  is  some- 
times asked  whether  the  new  psychology 
offers  any  positive  solution  to  the  problems  it 
reveals.  To  this  it  may  be  replied  that  the 
first  function  of  analytical  psychology  is  to 
reveal  the  problem  and  to  establish  the  basis 
of  self-knowledge  which  is  the  necessary  pre- 
liminary to  ethical  decision.  When  the 
corporal  of  our  former  example  discovers  his 
own  situation,  his  problem,  strictly  speaking, 
passes  out  of  the  realm  of  psychology  into  the 
domain  of  ethics.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
is  no  reason  to  limit  the  sphere  of  psychology 
to  the  study  of  pathological  states :  it  is  equally 
concerned  to  understand  the  processes  of  suc- 
cessful adaptation  to  life.  Among  these  the 
mechanism  of  sublimation  plays  an  important 
part.  A  neurosis  may  have  been  traced  to  a 
repression  of  an  unconscious  motive  of  a 
primitive  and  anti-social  nature,  for  which 
the  conditions  of  the  patient's  life  provide  no 
legitimate  channel  of  expression.  What 
then?  An  alternative  to  the  neurosis  may  be 
sought  in  the  fearless  disregard  of  the  claims 
of  society,  and  the  free  expression  of  the  in- 
157 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

stinct.  This  course  has  been  sometimes  advo- 
cated and  tried.  It  has  been  found,  however, 
that  apart  from  the  effects  upon  society,  it  is 
not  a  satisfactory  solution  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  individual.  It  does  not  lead  to 
permanent  self-harmony.  It  is,  in  fact,  only 
another  form  of  the  attempt  to  settle  the  con- 
flict by  ignoring  one  of  the  opposing  forces. 
The  solution  of  the  problem  lies  along  the 
line  of  sublimation,  which  means,  briefly,  the 
indirect  expression  of  an  instinctive  emotion 
in  some  cognate  manner  that  is  socially  use- 
ful. Sublimation  involves  restraint,  but  not 
repression.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  only  pos- 
sible  on  a  basis  of  conscious  recognition  of 
both  factors  in  the  conflict.  Freud  lays  stress 
on  the  essential  demand  for  sublimation  as  a 
means  of  social  progress;  but  his  theory  of 
the  unconscious  leads  him  to  associate  subli- 
mation with  the  process  of  repression.  In  a 
recent  account  of  the  Freudian  theory  it  is 
stated  that  "It  is  not  conceivable  that  man- 
kind should  exist  and  evolve  without  repres- 
sion, since  sublimation  must  continue  to  be  a 
path  from  the  egocentric  to  the  social  life. 
.  .  ."  l  It  is  also  maintained  that  the  forma- 
tion of  the  complex  "results  from  a  damming 

1  Barbara    Low:     An     Outline    of    Psycho-analysis. 
George  Allen  and  Unwin.  p.  90. 

158 


Mental  Mechanisms 

of  the  psychic  energy  accompanying  the  pro- 
found primitive  impulses,  which  remain  un- 
discharged owing  to  the  checks  imposed  by 
the  sublimating  forces." 3  In  the  present 
chapter  the  term  sublimation  is  applied  rather 
to  the  release  of  psychic  energy  by  the  indirect 
expression  of  the  primitive  impulse.  One  of 
the  clearest  examples  of  this  process  is  the 
experience  of  the  woman  who  sublimates  her 
maternal  instinct  in  the  work  of  nursing. 
Effective  sublimation  needs  to  be  closely  re- 
lated to  the  primitive  impulse  in  order  that 
the  maximum  amount  of  energy  may  be  avail- 
able. It  must  also  take  a  form  that  is  socially 
valuable.  The  conflict  between  the  social 
and  the  anti-social  impulses  is  resolved,  not 
by  the  identification  of  the  ego  with  one  side 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  other,  but  by  the  at- 
tempt to  recognize  both,  and  express  both 
along  a  single  line  of  action.  Such  a  process 
leads  ultimately  to  self-harmony  and  positive 
gain  to  the  personality;  but,  like  other  forms 
of  progress,  it  implies  a  definite  element  of 
sacrifice  and  renunciation. 

One  of  the  mental  mechanisms  that  becomes 
most  apparent  through  analysis  is  that  of  com- 
pensation. In  particular  there  is  a  universal 

1  An  Outline  of  Psycho-analysis,   p.  87. 
159 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

tendency  to  compensate  for  the  things  that 
produce  a  sense  of  inferiority — personal  de- 
fects, whether  they  be  mental  or  physical, 
social  or  educational — by  an  equivalent  em- 
phasis on  superiority.  We  instinctively  turn 
away  from  the  contemplation  of  our  failures 
and  fix  our  attention  on  some  more  agreeable 
prospect,  real  or  imaginary.  People  who  are 
uneasy  about  their  social  position  are  notori- 
ously the  most  conscious  of  their  superiority 
to  what  they  consider  a  lower  class  of  society. 
People  who  have  a  dim  sense  that  their  gen- 
eral intellectual  position  will  not  stand  close 
scrutiny  are  the  loudest  in  defending  some 
part  of  it  with  impassioned  certainty.  Jung 
has  said  that  in  general  "Extremes  of  con- 
duct always  arouse  suspicions  of  the  opposite 
tendencies  in  the  unconscious."  1 

An  instance  of  this  may  be  given  from  the 
experience  of  a  patient  who  came  for  treat- 
ment because  he  was  suffering  from  a  neurosis 
of  uncertainty.  He  could  not  shut  a  door  or 
turn  out  the  gas  without  going  back  to  make 
sure  if  he  had  really  done  it.  There  was, 
however,  a  further  factor  in  his  case  to  catch 
the  clinical  imagination:  he  had  written  a 

1  Analytical  Psychology,  by  Dr.  C.  G.  Jung,  Bailliere, 
Tindall  &  Cox,  1917. 

1 60 


Mental  Mechanisms 

number  of  extraordinarily  second-rate  tracts, 
and  he  distributed  them  by  the  hundred 
thousand.  Further  inquiry  revealed  that  as 
soon  as  he  saw  that  a  man  was  condemned  to 
be  hanged  he  would  write  to  the  prison  chap- 
lain, offering  to  visit  the  man.  He  was  in 
fact  a  religious  propagandist  of  a  perfectly 
untamed  character.  When  the  patient  was 
seen  and  his  case  examined,  it  was  found  that 
there  had  been  an  extremely  lurid  period  in 
his  life.  He  was  very  angry  at  having  to 
make  this  revelation,  and  said  that  he  had 
never  told  anybody  else  about  it;  but  then 
nobody  else  had  wanted  to  know.  It  was  im- 
possible not  to  suspect  that  the  indiscriminate 
distribution  of  tracts  was  not  due  to  an  or- 
dinary spiritual  mechanism,  but  had  a  patho- 
logical origin.  The  man  had  a  tremendous 
sense  of  shame,  a  guilt-complex  that  coloured 
his  whole  life.  He  was  trying  to  compensate 
for  it  every  hour  of  the  day;  but,  instead  of 
dealing  directly  with  his  problem,  he  pro- 
jected it  and  externalized  it.  He  had  the  idea 
of  atoning  for  his  own  past  sins  by  an  un- 
paralleled activity  in  saving  the  souls  of  other 
people.  Behind  this  idea  lay  the  mechanism 
of  compensation.  While  he  was  addressing 
tracts  to  people  condemned  to  be  hanged,  he 
was  enjoying  a  certain  amount  of  relief  from 
161 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

contemplating  his  own  lurid  past,  and  his 
own  merits  of  sharing  the  same  fate.  He  was 
able  to  think  of  himself,  not  in  terms  of  in- 
feriority and  guilt,  but  with  the  emotions  of 
superiority  and  pity. 

There  is  no  cynicism  in  the  suggestion  that 
the  mechanism  of  compensation  may  account 
for  activities  that  seem  to  be  inspired  by  re- 
ligious enthusiasm.  If  there  is  any  real  faith 
and  any  vital  religion,  it  must  assuredly  be 
based  on  the  conception  that  motive  is  every- 
thing. When  the  motive  will  not  bear  exami- 
nation, there  is  nothing  to  lose  by  leading  the 
individual  to  discover  it,  and  to  see  his  action 
in  its  true  colours. 

The  deceptive  mechanism  known  as  projec- 
tion has  just  been  referred  to.  All  human 
beings  without  exception  have  the  tendency 
to  project  on  to  their  environment,  their  rela- 
tions and  their  friends,  the  responsibility  for 
things  that  have  gone  amiss  in  their  own  lives. 
This  mechanism  is  an  effective  instrument  of 
the  unconscious  motive,  and  has  already  been 
touched  upon  in  that  connexion.1  It  was 
shown  how  the  neurotic  patient  tends  to  evade 
the  responsibility  for  his  problem,  and  to  look 
for  it  in  circumstances  rather  than  in  his  own 

1v.  supra,  pp.  128,  141. 
162 


Mental  Mechanisms 

psychological  situation.  It  is  a  tendency  that 
belongs  to  the  unconscious  way  of  thought, 
and  it  is  constantly  appearing  in  dreams.  It 
is  in  fact  inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  the 
dream  as  an  objectified  statement  of  an  indi- 
vidual problem.  The  dreamer  often  finds 
himself  bearing  the  responsibility  for  an 
action  in  the  shape  of  some  other  person.  An 
example  may  be  taken  in  the  dream  of  a 
woman,  who  had  drifted  into  a  very  feeble, 
meaningless  sort  of  life  through  lack  of  reso- 
lution. Her  parents  were  people  of  a  differ- 
ent character,  and  if  she  had  managed  to  live 
up  to  their  ideals  she  might  have  acquired 
more  backbone  and  strength  of  mind.  She 
dreamt  that  she  was  trying  to  cross  a  road 
after  her  mother.  The  road  was  full  of  traffic, 
and  when  she  had  got  across  her  mother  went 
back.  She  was  in  great  distress.  The  dream 
went  on:  "After  I  had  been  crying  some 
time,  my  mother  appeared  as  a  little  girl  in  a 
short  frock."  In  her  dream  she  is  shown  as 
laying  the  responsibility  for  her  desolate 
plight  upon  her  mother,  who  has  deserted 
her,  and  gone  back  to  the  wrong  side  of  the 
road.  But  the  figure  who  goes  back  is  herself, 
and  the  little  girl  is  again  herself,  her  own 
infantile  personality.  The  beginning  of  the 
dream  shows  the  projection  of  her  problem 
163 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

on  to  her  mother ;  and  then  comes  the  dramatic 
ending.  It  is  you  who  have  gone  back,  and 
not  your  mother  at  all.  The  little  girl,  the 
pitiable  child,  is  you. 

Through  a  study  of  the  tendencies  to  com- 
pensation and  to  projection  in  dreams  where 
they  appear  unchecked  by  rationality,  it  is 
possible  to  arrive  at  a  better  estimate  of  their 
influence  in  waking  life.  The  impulse  to 
rationality  in  the  conscious  mind  excludes  the 
cruder  possibilities  of  deception  by  these  men- 
tal mechanisms.  At  the  same  time,  it  often 
acts  as  an  ally,  and  clothes  the  primitive 
thought  in  a  garment  that  enables  it  to  pass 
unchallenged.  By  the  process  of  rationaliza- 
tion the  thoughts  and  actions  that  have  been 
prompted  by  a  motive  that  the  conscious  self 
is  unwilling  to  recognize  are  explained  and 
justified  on  grounds  that  satisfy  the  demands 
of  reason  and  self-approval. 

Most  of  the  mental  mechanisms  that  have 
been  touched  upon  belong  primarily  to  the 
unconscious  levels  of  thought.  As  such,  they 
need  to  be  recognized  and  detected ;  for  they 
are  the  signs  of  the  unconscious  motive,  un- 
related to  the  conscious  purpose.  The  man 
or  woman  who  has  to  bring  the  clumsy  meth- 
ods of  an  adult  mind  to  bear  upon  the  sensitive 
fabric  of  the  growing  child  or  adolescent  may 


Mental  Mechanisms 

well  try  to  guard  against  any  unnecessary 
sources  of  self-deception  and  bias.  The 
tendency  to  slip  back  into  the  methods  of 
primitive  thought  besets  both  the  adult  and 
the  child  with  a  life-long  persistency.  There 
is  no  escaping  the  truth  of  the  Frenchman's 
aphorism:  "Grattez  I'adulte  et  vous  y  trou- 
verez  I 'enfant."  The  teacher  who  is  to  exer- 
cise to  the  full  his  powers  of  helping  the  child 
in  his  development,  needs  above  all  to  under- 
stand the  regressive  tendency  in  himself,  and 
to  be  facing  his  own  problem  of  progress. 


165 


CHAPTER  VIII 
DREAM  SYMBOLISM 


LIMITATIONS  TO  THE  VALIDITY  OF  DREAM  INTERPRETA- 
TION. 

COMMON  SOURCES  OF  DIFFICULTY: 

Dreams  and  digestion. 

Confusion  of  the  manifest  and  the  latent  con- 
tents. 

Racial  and  personal  symbols — dreams,  myths 
and  obsessions. 

THE  AMATEUR  INTERPRETER: 

Dangers  of  interpreting  other  people's  dreams. 
Advantages  of  studying  one's  own. 

SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  IN: 

Repression  of  the  sex  instinct. 
Character  in  terms  of  sex  symbols. 

EXAMPLES  OF  RACIAL  AND  GENERAL  SYMBOLS: 
Right  and  Left. 
The  Self  and  the  Not-Self. 
Bridges,    Cross-roads,    and    Rivers    to    cross. 

Dream  of  religious  propagandist. 
Earth,  Air,  Water. 

Myth  of  Europa  and  Cadmus. 
Houses  and  rooms. 
Numbers. 

An  obsession  and  two  dreams. 
Forms  of  locomotion. 

The  Colonel  on  stilts. 

The  narrow-gauge  railway. 
Animals. 
Teeth. 
Death  and  Re-birth. 

Margate  Pier. 

Jung's  interpretation. 


DREAM  SYMBOLISM 

TN  previous  chapters  frequent  use  has  been 
•••  made  of  dream-material.  The  interpreta- 
tions given  will  have  seemed  to  some  readers 
far-fetched  and  difficult,  and  they  will  feel 
it  a  dangerous  thing  to  draw  conclusions  for 
life  and  conduct  from  evidence  that  appears 
so  shadowy  and  uncertain.  So  it  is;  and  the 
recognition  of  this  fact  is  a  more  promising 
preliminary  to  the  study  of  dreams  than  an 
attitude  of  uncritical  assurance.  Dream  in- 
terpretation has  advanced  by  the  ordinary 
scientific  method  of  empiricism — the  observa- 
tion and  collection  of  facts,  from  the  classifica- 
tion of  which  arise  conceptions  which  can  be 
applied  to  resume,  and  to  some  extent  to  pre- 
dict, further  phenomena  of  the  same  nature. 
This  method  has  given  valuable  results;  but 
it  has  not  reached  a  point  at  which  dogmatic 
certainty  is  justified.  This  is  due  not  only  to 
the  circumstance  that  the  analytical  method  of 
dream  interpretation  is  still  of  very  recent 
origin :  it  is  also  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the 
method  itself.  This  will  become  clearer  as 
the  various  difficulties  are  discussed. 

169 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

There  is  a  popular  theory  which  accounts 
for  dreams — and  particularly  for  the  fantastic 
and  distorted  elements  of  them  by  the  simple 
fact  of  physical  derangement:  "How  can 
you  expect  me  to  take  my  dreams  seriously, 
when  I  know  they  are  the  result  of  eating 
Welsh  rabbit  for  supper?"  An  analogy  will 
explain  this  difficulty.  Imagine  a  bay,  show- 
ing at  high-tide  a  certain  contour,  certain 
rocks  and  islands.  This  corresponds  to  our 
waking  consciousness.  The  normal  dream- 
level  of  consciousness  is  represented  by  low- 
tide  :  a  different  contour  is  seen.  At  the  neap- 
tide  the  water  falls  lower  than  at  any  other 
time,  and  thus  falling  it  reveals  rocks  and 
islands  which  had  been  unknown  before.  It 
reveals  these  new  features,  but  it  does  not 
cause  them :  they  have  always  been  there.  If 
by  a  dietetic  indiscretion  I  influence  the  cir- 
culation of  my  brain,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
my  dreams  will  be  more  vivid,  more  terrify- 
ing, more  exaggerated  than  any  I  have  had  on 
previous  nights,  when  my  digestion  was  in 
good  condition.  But  this  physical  disturbance 
has  not  produced  the  psychological  conflict: 
it  has  only  revealed  it  in  an  intensified  and 
exaggerated  form. 

The  manifest  content  of  a  dream  may  sug- 
gest a  certain  meaning;  but  further  investiga- 
170 


Dream  Symbolism 

tion  may  reveal  a  latent  content,  which  has 
quite  another  meaning.  The  failure  to  dis- 
tinguish the  manifest  from  the  latent  content 
lies  at  the  back  of  a  common  objection  to 
dream  interpretation:  "My  dreams  can't 
have  any  meaning,  because  I  always  dream 
of  what  I  have  been  doing  the  day  before." 
While  there  is  no  question  that  the  material 
of  the  dream  is  often  taken  from  recent  experi- 
ence, this  observation  will  not  often  account 
fully  for  the  form  taken  by  the  dream.  There 
is  frequently  some  curious  distortion  or  addi- 
tion to  the  picture,  which  suggests  that  it  has 
not  merely  been  "photographically  lined  on 
the  tablet  of  my  mind."  In  a  dream  of  cor- 
recting examination  papers  at  the  end  of 
term  some  odd  irrelevancy  may  be  introduced : 
"The  curious  thing  was  that  I  seemed  to  be 
doing  it  in  the  school  chapel" — or — "That 
the  papers  were  written  by  people  I  know  at 
home."  This  familiar  characteristic  of  the 
dream  makes  it  necessary  to  find  some  further 
explanation  for  the  selection  of  the  manifest 
content. 

When  the  symbolic  interpretation  of  dreams 
is  accepted  as  a  hypothesis,  a  further  difficulty 
arises.  We  will  suppose  that  the  dreamer  sees 
himself  on  a  railway  line.  A  train  is  coming 
towards  him  at  full  speed.  Just  as  it  is  going 
171 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

to  run  over  him,  he  manages  to  drag  himself 
out  of  the  way.  From  the  manifest  content 
it  is  evident  that  the  dreamer  is  represented 
as  being  in  very  serious  danger ;  and  it  would 
be  possible  to  go  on  with  a  general  symbolic 
interpretation,  in  which  the  engine  would 
appear  as  the  driving  force  of  his  life.  If 
the  dreamer  had  no  personal  association  with 
the  elements  of  the  dream,  it  might  be  assumed 
that  they  bore  this  general  symbolic  mean- 
ing. On  the  other  hand,  the  railway  line 
might  recall  to  him  some  particular  incident 
in  his  own  life;  and  these  personal  associa- 
tions would  at  once  give  the  dream  a  specific 
meaning  for  the  dreamer,  which  would  be 
more  important  than  its  general  meaning.  In 
working  out  the  value  of  dreams  it  is  soon 
found  that  some  of  the  symbols  are  in  the 
current  coin  or  treasury  notes  of  accepted 
value,  while  others  are  in  the  form  of  cheques, 
crossed,  and  strictly  not  negotiable. 

The  dream  deals  with  the  problem  of  the 
individual  in  an  objective  form.  Because  it 
deals  with  the  individual,  the  subjective  factor 
is  always  of  great  importance,  and  invalidates 
any  attempt  to  interpret  the  dream  solely  on 
the  basis  of  a  fixed  standard  of  values.  Be- 
cause it  deals  with  the  problem  in  an  objecti- 
fied form,  it  uses  primitive  forms  of  thought 
172 


Dream  Symbolism 

— symbols  which  belong  to  man's  first  at- 
tempts to  objectify  the  abstract.  Dreams  and 
myths  have  a  common  origin,  and  the  ancient 
symbols  of  mythology — the  serpent,  the  fruit, 
the  bull,  the  king  and  queen,  these  and  others 
are  appearing  night  after  night  in  the  dreams 
of  modern  people.  The  language  of  an  indi- 
vidual's obsessions  or  phobiae  is,  in  like  man- 
ner, an  objective  expression  of  his  problem. 
The  commonest  obsession  that  the  layman  is 
acquainted  with  is  probably  the  "washing 
mania."  People  with  a  compulsion  neurosis 
of  this  kind  are  only  working  out  in  symboli- 
cal form  their  own  psychological  situation: 
the  washing  represents  the  claim  of  the  uncon- 
scious for  the  solution  of  a  guilt-complex, 
which  has  never  been  resolved. 

It  is  not  possible,  in  one  chapter,  to  do  more 
than  touch  the  fringe  of  the  subject  of  the  in- 
terpretation of  dreams.  It  may  be  thought 
that  any  attempt  to  treat  the  subject  in  a  popu- 
lar form  is  misguided,  because  it  gives  sanction 
and  encouragement  to  amateur  efforts  at 
psycho-analysis.  The  danger  of  the  subject 
being  lightly  handled  by  the  amateur  is  a  real 
one — whether  the  would-be  analyst  holds  a 
medical  degree  or  not.  He  is  strongly  tempted 
to  express  an  opinion  on  other  people's 
dreams,  and  is  likely  to  fall  into  the  error  that 
173 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

has  already  been  noted:  that  of  interpreting 
symbols  by  rule  of  thumb,  without  any  investi- 
gation of  personal  associations.  Then  again, 
he  is  likely  to  be  suffering  from  an  uncon- 
scious motive  of  his  own.  When  the  amateur 
analyst  has  just  begun  to  discover  his  own 
seething  cauldron  of  conflict  and  perplexity, 
he  is  naturally  thirsting  to  find  other  people 
with  similar  conflicts,  and  to  project  on  to 
them  the  problems  which  he  would  like  to 
shirk  himself.  Furthermore,  it  may  be  said 
that  the  tendency  to  talk  lightly  about  the  in- 
terpretation of  dreams,  to  challenge  one's 
friends  to  tell  their  dreams,  and  to  offer  glib 
interpretations  of  them  at  sight,  is  evidence 
that  the  person  in  question  has  not  been  suffi- 
ciently sobered  by  his  own  experience.  He 
has  not  learnt  to  take  a  sufficiently  serious  view 
of  the  unconscious  and  its  function,  and  he 
is  probably  in  need  of  a  prolonged  study  of 
his  own  conflict  with  his  mouth  shut.  But 
while  amateur  analysis  is  a  very  doubtful  and 
often  a  thoroughly  dangerous  means  of  trying 
to  help  other  people,  there  is  much  to  be 
gained  by  an  attempt  to  study  one's  own 
dreams  consistently  and  seriously.  It  is  much 
less  exciting,  produces  at  first  very  small  re- 
sults, and  these  mostly  of  a  humiliating  kind, 
and  in  general  demands  great  perseverance 
174 


Dream  Symbolism 

and  sincerity.  In  the  first  place,  most  people 
find  it  an  effort  to  recapture  their  dreams.  It 
is  often  far  easier  and  cheaper  to  get  other 
people's  dream  material  than  to  remember 
our  own.  When  the  collection  of  dreams  has 
been  begun,  many  that  have  been  noted  down 
will  appear  quite  unintelligible.  After  a 
time  it  will  be  found  that  certain  symbols  re- 
appear. Perhaps  a  certain  Uncle  John  will 
begin  to  figure  in  the  dreams.  The  dreamer 
has  to  ask  himself  what  this  person  stands  for 
in  his  life,  and  it  may  then  appear  that  the 
most  obvious  thing  about  Uncle  John  was  his 
notorious  stinginess.  A  beginning  has  been 
made,  and  in  time  other  personages  will  be 
identified  as  representing  other  aspects  or 
tendencies  of  the  dreamer's  character;  and  he 
will  begin  to  recognize  also  some  of  the  racial 
symbols  that  are  the  common  stock  of 
humanity.  While  he  is  slowly  learning  the 
language  of  his  own  dream  symbolism,  fresh 
problems  appear.  Is  the  dream  a  picture  of 
the  psychological  situation  as  it  is,  or  is  it  a 
criticism  of  it?  Sometimes  the  dream  is  a 
statement  of  the  problem;  sometimes  it  is  com- 
pensatory, and  contains  the  factors  that  have 
been  ignored  in  consciousness.  In  his  own 
case,  the  dreamer  will  usually  have  material 
for  deciding  which  of  these  two  functions  the 
175 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

dream  is  fulfilling;  in  the  case  of  other  people, 
he  may  well  hesitate  to  give  an  opinion.  The 
person  who  has  served  the  apprenticeship  of 
studying  his  own  dreams  for  some  years  may 
possibly  by  that  time  have  reached  the  posi- 
tion of  being  able  to  help  some  of  his  friends, 
but  no  longer  in  the  spirit  of  light-hearted 
assurance.  In  all  probability  he  will  have 
been  a  good  deal  sobered  by  much  dreary  con- 
tact with  his  own  unpleasant  unconscious;  but 
he  will  also  have  gained  some  results,  which, 
however  small,  are  of  great  value.  It  sounds 
a  vague  and  difficult  process.  There  is  indeed 
no  dogmatic  certainty  to  be  found  in  dreams, 
and  no  verbal  inspiration.  Nevertheless, 
those  who  are  content  to  follow  the  evidence 
where  it  leads,  through  confusion  and  ob- 
scurity, may  begin  to  find  emerging  such  cer- 
tainties as  are  the  crown  of  disinterested  study 
in  a  difficult  field.  If  they  cannot  say  of  their 
dreams, 

"All's  a  clear  rede  and  no  more  riddle  now," 

they  have  made  the  more  important  discovery : 
"Truth,  nowhere,  lies  yet  everywhere  in  these — 
Not  absolutely  in  a  portion,  yet 
Evolvable  from  the  whole :  evolved  at  last 
Painfully,  held  tenaciously  .  .  ."  1 
XR.  Browning:  The  Ring  and  the  Book.     The  Pope. 
n.    227,  228,  ff. 

176 


Dream  Symbolism 

There  is  one  feature  of  dream  interpretation 
that  has  constantly  been  a  stumbling-block, 
and  that  is  the  amount  of  sexual  symbolism 
that  occurs.  Two  things  may  be  said  of  this. 
In  the  first  place,  the  conditions  of  life  in  a 
civilized  community  in  peace-time  demand  a 
greater  restraint  of  the  sexual  instinct  than  of 
any  other  of  the  instincts.  From  that  fact 
alone  it  would  follow  that  our  dream-life  is 
more  taken  up  with  the  whole  question  of  sex 
than  with  the  other  instinctive  activities.  The 
second  reason  is  that  sexual  symbolism  has  for 
all  time  been  a  racial  form  of  expression  for 
qualities  of  character.  Primitive  man  looked 
on  sexual  life  as  the  test  of  character  and 
maturity:  the  male  symbol  was  inseparable 
from  the  ideas  of  potency,  virility,  executive 
power — a  process  to  which  the  very  name  of 
virtue  bears  witness  in  modern  speech.  There 
are  many  pictures  1  in  dreams  that  can  be  re- 
duced to  an  obvious  sexual  significance,  but 
refer  primarily  to  other  problems  in  the 
dreamer's  life,  and  symbolize  not  physical  or 
objective  sexuality  but  factors  of  character 
growth.  Psychology  owes  to  Dr.  Jung  this 
immensely  fruitful  conception  of  the  interpre- 
tation of  sexual  symbols  on  the  subjective 
plane. 

1  Cf.  The  Nurse's  Dream,  p.  103,  f. 
177 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

We  pass  on  to  consider  some  of  the  more 
frequently  recurring  racial  symbols.  Of  these 
one  of  the  most  unvarying  is  Right  and  Left, 
representing  ethical  right  and  wrong.  This 
is  a  universal  symbol  whose  meaning  appears 
to  be  very  rarely  altered  by  any  personal 
association. 

Another  very  important  piece  of  symbolism 
is  that  of  the  Self  and  the  Not-Self.  It  is  com- 
mon to  have  a  dream  in  which  there  are  two 
people,  both  of  whom  are  somehow  identified 
with  oneself.  These  dreams  often  show  in  a 
very  significant  way  where  the  major  synthesis 
of  the  personality  lies:  they  are  a  picture  of 
the  distribution  of  interest.  "I  was  in  my 
form-room  giving  a  lesson;  but  somehow  I 
was  really  sitting  in  the  corner  of  the  room, 
writing  a  letter"  A  dream  of  this  type  would 
suggest  that  the  driving  force  of  life  was  not 
concentrated  on  the  work  that  the  person  was 
supposed  to  be  doing. 

Bridges,  Cross-roads,  and  Rivers  to  cross 
often  appear  with  the  meaning  of  crossing  a 
Rubicon — making  a  decision.  It  is  interest- 
ing how  frequently  the  dreamer  notes  whether 
he  is  crossing  from  the  right  bank  to  the  left 
or  vice  versa.  He  may  not  notice  it  when  he 
first  records  the  dream,  but  on  inquiry  can 
nearly  always  remember  the  direction  of  the 

.78 


Dream  Symbolism 

stream.  The  following  is  the  dream  of  a 
person  of  much  zeal  and  ability,  who  took  a 
leading  part  in  religious  propaganda.  "I  was 
looking  out  of  a  window  on  to  a  street,  which 
was  crowded  with  people.  I  was  telling  them 
to  go  to  the  right;  at  the  end  of  the  road  they 
would  find  a  bridge,  and  when  they  had 
crossed  the  bridge  they  would  get  a  wonder- 
ful view."  So  far  the  picture  represented  the 
dreamer's  life  and  message  much  as  it  would 
appear  in  the  conscious  estimate  of  the  situa- 
tion. The  dream  went  on:  "Curiously 
enough  I  didn't  feel  any  desire  to  go  that  way 
myself.  I  was  constantly  looking  over  to  the 
left.  .  .  ."  The  dream  had  so  obvious  a  bear- 
ing on  the  situation  that  it  was  difficult  to  im- 
agine that  its  real  significance  was  to  be  sought 
for  in  terms  of  objective  sexuality,  by  inter- 
preting the  bridge  in  the  strictly  anatomical 
sense  in  which  this  symbol  is  accepted  by  the 
Freudian  School. 

Earth,  Air  and  Water  are  symbols  of  great 
interest.  Earth  frequently  symbolizes  the 
concrete,  terra  firma,  the  objective  fact  of  out- 
ward reality.  There  is  often  an  element  of 
criticism  and  ridicule  in  the  dream-cartoons 
of  going  up  in  an  aeroplane,  or  otherwise 
soaring  away  from  the  earth.  It  expresses  the 
escape  into  phantasy:  the  tendency  to  do  great 
179 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

things  in  imagination,  rather  than  in  fact.  It 
is  akin  to  the  principle  of  the  monkey  tribe, 
swinging  about  in  the  branches,  despising  the 
animals  who  plod  along  the  earth — 

"Dreaming  ot  deeds  that  we  mean  to  do, 
All  complete  in  a  minute  or  two." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  dreamer  may  find 
himself  trying  in  vain  to  start  an  aeroplane: 
the  machine  refuses  to  rise,  and  he  can  only 
move  along  the  ground.  His  problem  is  that 
he  is  unable  to  get  away  from  the  concrete 
and  the  objective,  and  lacks  the  capacity  for 
vision  and  imagination. 

In  another  sense  the  earth  represents  the  un- 
conscious. In  many  dreams  and  myths  the 
dreamer  or  the  hero  has  to  go  down  into  the 
earth,  or  into  some  cave,  where  he  meets  trial 
and  danger,  and  from  which  he  emerges  with 
new  life  and  power,  sometimes  symbolized  by 
a  treasure  or  a  weapon  that  he  has  found. 
This  movement  towards  the  mother  earth — 
antiquam  exquirere  matrem — is  one  of  the 
great  symbols  of  re-birth. 

Water  has  also  an  important  association 
with  the  idea  of  re-birth.  It  is  a  symbol  with 
many  meanings.  In  one  of  the  most  interest- 
ing it  represents  the  intermediate  element  be- 
180 


Dream  Symbolism 

tween  earth  and  air,  that  is  to  say,  the  zone 
in  which  thought  and  physical  feeling  meet. 
In  this  sense  it  often  appears  in  the  dreams  of 
the  adolescent  at  that  critical  period  when  he 
or  she  is  making  the  discovery  that  physical 
feeling  can  be  altered  by  thought-processes. 
It  appears  with  unmistakable  significance  in 
the  story  of  Europa.  The  subject  of  this 
myth  is  one  of  the  unvarying  themes  of 
human  life,  and  the  terms  in  which  it  is  ex- 
pressed are  no  less  a  part  of  the  permanent 
symbolism  of  the  race.  The  imagery  of  the 
story  is  constantly  re-appearing  in  the  dreams 
of  people  who  are  quite  unversed  in  mythol- 
ogy. Europa  is  in  a  meadow  near  the  sea- 
shore with  her  brothers.  She  is  playing  with 
flowers — the  symbols  of  romance.  Her 
brothers  leave  her  and  the  white  bull  appears. 
She  is  afraid,  and  calls  for  help,  but  she  can- 
not make  her  brothers  hear.  Her  fear  is  soon 
forgotten,  for  the  bull  appears  so  gentle  and 
inviting  that  she  plays  with  him,  and  decks 
him  with  her  flowers,  and  finally  gets  on  to  his 
back.  But  when  she  thus  yields  herself  to  him 
completely,  he  is  off  with  her  at  once,  and  he 
makes  straight  for  the  water — the  sphere  of 
passion,  where  sentiment  and  sensation  meet. 
He  plunges  in  with  her,  and  swims  away, 
181 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

and  she  never  returns  to  her  father's  house.1 
The  rest  of  the  story  may  be  recalled  here, 
for  it  it  is  equally  full  of  meaning.  It  tells 
how  Cadmus  sets  out  in  search  of  his  sister, 
accompanied  by  his  mother,  his  brother,  and 
his  playfellow;  how  first  one,  and  then  an- 
other of  them  is  left  behind;  until  at  last  he 
is  bereft  even  of  the  object  of  his  pilgrimage. 
The  Oracle  tells  him  to  forget  Europa  and 
the  bull,  and  to  set  out  on  a  new  quest:  he  is 
to  "follow  the  cow,"  the  feminine  principle. 
The  story  tells  how  he  finds  at  last  the  site 
of  his  new  home,  and  decides  to  settle  there 
with  his  male  companions.  At  this  point  he 
turns  away  wearily  from  further  effort,  and 
surrenders  himself  to  thoughts  of  the  past. 
He  is  aroused  by  the  loss  of  his  friends,  and 
the  challenge  to  fight  the  dragon.  The  myth 
continues  with  the  powerful  symbolism  of  the 
sowing  of  the  dragon's  teeth :  the  conflict  that 
follows:  the  laborious  building  of  the  city: 
and  at  the  last,  the  sudden  discovery  of  the 
palace  not  made  with  hands,  and  of  Har- 
monia,  the  veiled  woman,  at  once  familiar  and 
strange,  waiting  there  for  Cadmus.  Under 
such  symbols  myth  and  legend  present  in  a 

1  The  symbolism  of  the  flowers  and  the  sudden  menace 
has  an  exact  parallel  in  the  dream  of  the  adolescent  girl, 
quoted  on  p.  in  above. 

182 


Dream  Symbolism 

collective  form  the  permanent  problems  of 
development  and  progress;  and  under  such 
symbols  again  the  unconscious  still  objectifies 
these  problems  in  the  dreams  of  individuals. 

Another  symbol  that  is  common  is  the 
house,  or  the  room,  representing  the  dreamer's 
own  mental  life.  At  the  beginning  of  analy-^ 
sis,  when  the  patient  is  discovering  the  vast- 
ness  of  the  problem  to  be  dealt  with,  it  is  very 
common  to  dream  of  a  house  with  which  no 
personal  associations  can  be  given.  "/  dreamt 
that  I  'was  in  a  large  house,  'with  long  cor- 
ridors, and  a  great  many  rooms.  I  tried  to 
get  into  some  of  them,  but  they  were  all 
locked.  It  was  very  strange  and  bare"  The 
dreamer  is  startled  at  the  extent  of  the  un- 
known, unfamiliar  chambers  of  his  mind. 
Often  the  dream  will  go  on:  "I  <was  on  the 
first  floor,  and  I  heard  you  calling  me  to  come 
down  into  the  cellar."  This  is  the  analyst's 
demand  that  the  dreamer  should  penetrate 
below  the  surface  of  his  problem,  and  get 
down  to  the  unconscious  factors. 

Numbers  play  an  important  part  in  the 
symbolism  of  the  unconscious :  but  the  mean- 
ing is  often  very  difficult  to  trace.  A  young 
man,  the  patient  of  a  colleague  of  the  writer's, 
was  obsessed  by  the  number  four.  He  could 
not  sleep,  until  he  had  arranged  four  things 

183 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

on  the  table  by  his  bed.  In  the  course  of  the 
day,  he  always  contrived  to  dirty  two  pairs  of 
shoes,  in  order  that  there  might  be  four  shoes 
outside  his  bedroom  door.  He  was  quite  un- 
able to  account  for  the  obsession.  The  expla- 
nation was  found  to  be  as  follows :  The  man 
was  a  Jew,  and  four  was  the  number  of  the 
family  pew  in  the  synagogue.  It  represented 
symbolically  and  unconsciously  the  whole  idea 
of  the  Jewish  tradition,  family  tradition, 
family  religion. 

A  patient  in  a  nursing  home,  who  was  not 
ostensibly  dissatisfied  with  the  fees  that  she 
was  paying,  namely  eight  guineas  a  week, 
dreamed  that  she  was  for  one  day  at  an  hotel 
in  France;  that  a  bill  for  30  francs  was 
brought  to  her,  and  that  she  protested  that  it 
was  too  dear.  In  discussing  the  dream  she 
was  asked  what  would  be  the  charge  per  week 
at  this  rate.  After  some  time  she  arrived  at 
the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  210  francs, 
and  after  further  calculation,  this  was  dis- 
covered to  be  eight  guineas.  She  found  the 
coincidence  embarrassing. 

Another  patient  dreamt  that  she  was  sup- 
ping at  the  Trocadero.  A  waiter  brought  her 
a  bill,  saying,  "Here  is  your  bill  for  2s.  6d., 
but  you  must  pay  45.  6d.  for  the  waiters."  She 
replied:  "I  will  pay  the  2s.  6d.,  but  I  will 

.84 


Dream  Symbolism 

not  pay  the  4^.  6d.,  no  matter  what  the  other 
people  may  do."  She  had  been  much  troubled 
with  perplexity  in  making  a  decision  between 
two  courses  which  were  open  to  her.  One 
was  marriage,  and  the  other  was  social  service ; 
and  she  knew  she  had  to  do  one  or  the  other 
(as  all  of  us  have  to  do — and  some  of  us,  both) . 
Eventually  the  2s.  6J.  was  found  to  represent 
the  two-and-a-half  years  during  which  she 
had  served  as  a  V.A.D. — the  only  social 
service  she  had  ever  done  in  her  life — during 
which  she  had  been  happier  than  at  any  other 
time.  It  was  exactly  four-and-a-half  years 
since  she  had  first  met  the  man  whom  it  was 
possible  for  her  to  marry.  The  dream  repre- 
sented the  decision  in  her  own  mind  between 
the  readiness  to  accept  the  solution  of  a  con- 
ventional marriage,  and  the  willingness  to 
justify  her  existence  by  some  form  of  service, 
such  as  she  had  already  tried. 

All  forms  o'f  locomotion  are  interesting  and 
important  symbols.  They  represent  charac- 
ter-growth, development,  the  dynamics  of 
life;  and  obviously  they  may  be  fast  or  slow, 
easy  or  difficult,  suitable  or  unsuitable, 
restricted  or  free.  Here  is  an  example  of  a 
peculiarly  unsuitable  form  of  locomotion.  It 
appears  in  the  dream  of  a  Colonel.  He  be- 
longed to  an  old  Army  family;  took  his  pro- 
185 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

fession  with  great  seriousness,  and  before  the 
war  held  a  staff  appointment  at  a  Military 
College.  He  had  a  great  reputation  as  a  lec- 
turer on  tactics.  When  the  war  broke  out  he 
received  instructions  from  the  War  Office, 
which  made  it  seem  probable  that  he  would 
be  ordered  to  France  in  an  important  capacity, 
and  that  he  would  soon  have  the  opportunity 
of  putting  his  knowledge  to  practical  use.  He 
began  to  be  troubled  with  insomnia.  He  had 
absolutely  no  fear  for  his  life:  but  he  had  an 
intolerable  fear  for  his  reputation.  He  could 
not  face  the  thought  that  it  might  not  survive 
the  test  of  actual  warfare.  And  so  he  was 
unable  to  sleep.  When  he  was  asked  if  he 
had  had  any  dreams  lately,  he  said  he  had  not 
— except  indeed  for  a  mere  fragment  that  was 
of  no  importance.  The  fragment  ran  thus: 
"I  was  travelling  over  a  very  muddy  field  in 
a  great  hurry  to  get  somewhere.  I  was  walk- 
ing on  a  high  pair  of  stilts"  His  problem 
was  not  lack  of  ability  or  lack  of  zeal:  it  was 
just  that  he  needed  to  come  down  from  his 
perch,  and  to  risk  getting  his  reputation  be- 
spattered in  contact  with  the  experience  of 
active  service. 

Another  unsuitable  form  of  locomotion  ap- 
pears in  the  dream  of  a  patient  who  was  being 
1 86 


Dream  Symbolism 

treated  for  stammer:  but  had  also  sold  his 
soul  as  completely  as  Faust  ever  sold  his.  He 
was  a  doctor,  and  as  soon  as  he  was  qualified 
he  had  become  assistant  superintendent  at  a 
small  country  asylum.  There  he  had  re- 
mained for  seven  years.  He  disclaimed  any 
special  interest  in  the  work — such  interests  as 
he  had  lay  in  other  directions.  He  remained 
there,  he  said,  because  it  was  so  safe.  General 
practice  might  be  more  varied  and  interest- 
ing, but  he  considered  it  a  risky  business :  you 
might  easily  make  a  mess  of  it  or  lose  it,  or 
have  an  action  brought  against  you.  More- 
over, it  was  a  life  that  was  full  of  disturbances 
by  day  and  night.  In  his  present  post  he  was 
sure  of  his  position  and  his  pension;  his  meals 
were  regular,  his  nights  were  undisturbed; 
everything  was  the  same  from  day  to  day.  His 
one  principle  in  life  was  "Safety  first,"  and  he 
had  become  a  perfect  slave  to  routine.  This 
was  his  dream :  "I  was  travelling  over  rough, 
boggy  country  on  a  narrow  gauge  railway. 
The  gauge  was  only  twelve  inches.  I  saw  a 
hill  ahead,  and  realized  that  the  rails  didn't 
go  over  it.  I  woke  in  terror."  The  routine 
which  appears  to  carry  one  forward  so 
smoothly  from  day  to  day  is  shown  as  an  in- 
adequate vehicle  of  progress.  The  only  way 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

to  get  over  the  Hill  Difficulty  is  to  get  out  of 
the  groove  and  to  walk. 

Animals  are  a  symbol  for  the  way  in  which 
we  are  looking  at  life's  forces.  The  bull  rep- 
resents the  view  of  these  forces  as  too  power- 
ful to  be  safe,  too  violent  to  be  argued  with. 
Europa  finds  herself  carried  off  by  an  irre- 
sistible force.  Black  and  white  symbolize 
approval  and  disapproval :  and  the  white  bull 
is  a  pure  libido,  but  terrifyingly  strong. 

In  addition  to  this  conception  of  the  bull, 
myth  symbolism  contains  the  idea  of  purifica- 
tion by  the  blood  of  the  bull.  The  power  of 
this  symbol  is  seen  in  the  whole  religion  of 
Mithraism,  which  is  dominated  by  the  idea 
that  mankind  is  up  against  tremendous  forces, 
and  that  purification  must  come  by  participa- 
tion in  these  very  forces.  The  symbolism  of 
the  cow  has  already  been  touched  upon  in 
referring  to  the  Europa  myth. 

In  dreaming  of  the  horse  or  the  dog,  we  are 
identifying  the  forces  of  life  with  more  man- 
ageable and  friendly  animals.  The  rat  often 
appears  in  the  dreams  of  people  who  are 
thinking  of  the  sex-impulse  as  something  they 
loathe  and  despise:  they  are  also  afraid  of  it, 
and  they  wish  it  would  get  into  its  hole,  and 
disappear.  It  is  an  unsatisfactory  attitude, 
and  generally  characteristic  of  the  prude. 
1 88 


Dream  Symbolism 

A  reference  has  already  been  made  l  to  the 
symbols  of  the  spear  and  the  grail,  represent- 
ing the  two  great  sex  characteristics,  the 
executive  and  the  receptive.  These  belong  to 
the  eternal  verities  of  life,  and  are  continually 
appearing  in  dreams. 

The  problem  of  authority,  which  is  of  such 
vital  importance  to  the  child  and  to  the 
adolescent,  often  finds  symbolic  expression  in 
dreams.  An  example  of  this  has  already  been 
quoted.2 

The  tooth  is  a  frequent  symbol  of  great  im- 
portance. It  represents  in  the  first  place  an 
adjustment  to  life,  the  primitive  means  of 
defence.  Secondly,  it  stands  for  the  idea  of 
something  of  which  a  part  is  showing  and  a 
part  is  hidden;  and  it  is  the  hidden  part  that 
is  apt  to  cause  pain.  The  tooth  appears  as 
a  symbol  of  a  system  of  ideas  which  have 
formed  a  complex  below  the  level  of  con- 
sciousness. A  patient  will  often  dream  that 
the  analyst  is  taking  out  his  teeth:  expressing 
the  idea  that  part  of  what  has  been  his  equip- 
ment in  life  is  being  attacked,  and  that  it  can- 
not be  removed  without  causing  pain  to  the 
part  that  lies  beneath  the  surface. 

The  symbolism  of  death  and  re-birth  runs 
1  v.  supra,  p.  103,  177.  2  v.  supra,  p.  89. 

.89 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

through  all  mythology,  and  constantly  appears 
in  dreams.  People  who  have  particularly 
vivid  dreams  of  the  death  of  friends  are  apt 
to  turn  to  the  obituary  column  of  the  morning 
paper  next  day,  and  as  soon  as  they  learn  that 
the  friend  in  question  is  in  robust  health,  they 
are  a  little  ashamed  of  having  been  tempted 
to  take  a  dream  seriously,  and  they  dismiss  it 
from  their  minds  forthwith.  But  the  uncon- 
scious is  commonly  taken  up  with  something 
infinitely  more  important  to  the  dreamer  than 
the  prediction  of  what  will  happen  to  other 
people.  It  is  concerned  with  a  problem  that 
lies  within  the  personality  of  the  dreamer  him- 
self, and  the  persons  who  figure  in  the  dream 
are  aspects  of  this  personality.  The  informa- 
tion that  the  dream  supplies  is,  therefore,  not 
of  a  kind  that  can  be  obtained  more  satisfac- 
torily from  external  sources.  The  dreamer 
has  to  ask  himself  what  it  is  that  the  friend 
stands  for  in  his  life:  for  the  dream  deals  with 
the  death  of  this  part  of  his  personality. 

Sometimes  it  is  the  dreamer  himself  who  is 
represented  as  dead,  or  as  having  to  die.  An 
example  of  this  is  found  in  the  dream  of  an 
exceedingly  active-minded  matron,  who  had 
come  to  a  hospital  prepared  to  "make  things 
hum,"  chiefly  by  means  of  a  vigorous  pro- 
gramme of  whist-drives,  entertainments,  and 
190 


Dream  Symbolism 

so  forth.  "I  dreamt  that  I  was  at  the  end  6f{ 
Margate  Pier,  and  had  to  throw  myself  into 
the  sea"  She  had  never  been  to  Margate, 
and  had  no  personal  associations  with  it.  Pre- 
sumably, therefore,  it  symbolized  its  general 
characteristic — incessant,  shallow,  meaning- 
less amusement  of  the  Christy  minstrel  type. 
Her  undue  extraversion  and  over-activity  on 
the  conscious  plane  calls  forth  a  compensatory 
movement  in  the  unconscious:  the  demand 
that  she  should  leave  Margate  Pier  behind, 
and  go  down  into  deep  waters. 

Birth  dreams  are  explained  by  the  Freudian 
School  on  the  theory  that  the  unconscious  is 
stored  with  memories  of  the  ante-natal  life. 
Jung's  interpretation  of  these  dreams  is  of 
surpassing  value.  Every  new  adjustment  to 
life  is  a  re-birth  out  of  the  death  of  the  old. 
Death  and  re-birth  form,  therefore,  a  con- 
stant theme  in  the  present  history  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  advance  to  a  new  phase  of 
growth  is  attended  by  definite  self-renuncia- 
tion. The  special  privileges  of  childhood 
have  to  be  surrendered  in  making  the  adjust- 
ment to  adolescence;  there  is  again  a  re-birth 
to  adult  life.1  When  the  active  and  generative 
life  is  at  end,  there  is  the  demand  to  curtail 

1  Cf .   The  dream  of  the  girl  burying  her  baby  in  the 
vrood,  quoted  on  p.  106  above. 
191 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

activities,  to  surrender  positions  of  impor- 
tance and  responsibility :  the  renunciation  that 
is  essential  to  the  next  new  birth,  the  adjust- 
ment to  old  age.  These  drastic  changes  in 
the  life  of  the  individual  do  not  come  sud- 
denly. The  new  phase  of  growth  is  germinat- 
ing slowly  in  the  unconscious  long  before  it 
emerges  into  the  upper  air.  It  is  often  fore- 
shadowed in  dreams,  before  it  enters  waking 
experience;  and  this  is  the  truest  sense  in 
which  dreams  are  prophetic. 


192 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  HERD  INSTINCT  AND  THE 
HERD  IDEAL 


RECAPITULATION  : 

The  gregarious  nature  of  man. 
Society  greater  than  the  individual. 
The  next  generation  more  important  than  the 
present. 

Two  TYPES  OF  MENTAL  MECHANISM  IN  SOCIAL  RELA- 
TIONSHIPS : 

Normal  social  influences. 
Mob  hysteria. 

Two  TYPES  IN  SOCIETY: 

Prophets  and  priests. 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  IN  HIS  RELATION 
TO  THE  HERD: 

From  an  individual  to  a  collective  aim. 
From  a  collective  to  an  individual  judgment. 

THE  HERD  INSTINCT: 

A  distinct  instinct  and  an  unconscious  motive. 
Two  typical  reactions :  the  fear  of  being  isolated, 
and  the  fear  of  being  ignored. 

THE  HERD  INSTINCT  AND  THE  HERD  IDEAL: 
Sublimation. 


THE  HERD  INSTINCT  AND  THE 
HERD  IDEAL 

/CERTAIN  preliminary  assumptions  from 
previous  chapters  may  be  restated  here 
as  the  obvious  foundation  for  a  discussion  of 
the  herd  instinct.  It  was  urged  l  that  the 
question  of  individual  development  could  not 
be  studied  without  reference  to  sociological 
principles.  Man  is  a  gregarious  animal:  and 
whether  we  like  it  or  not,  this  fact  has  to  be 
taken  into  account  in  studying  his  psychol- 
ogy. Secondly,  it  was  maintained  2  that  the 
demands  of  society  are  superior  to  those  of 
the  individual.  It  is  a  familiar  paradox  that 
the  progress  of  civilization  is  marked  by  an 
increasing  sense  of  the  value  of  the  individual, 
and  an  increasing  readiness  on  the  part  of  the 
individual  to  recognize  the  paramount  claims 
of  the  community.  It  is  by  ignoring  the  latter 
point — so  it  seems  to  the  present  writer — that 
the  original  school  of  psycho-analysis  has  been 
led  to  take  up  such  an  extreme  position. 

1  v.  supra,  73.     2  v.  supra,  p.  74. 
195 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

Thirdly,  we  have  assumed  the  evolutionary 
standpoint,1  with  its  fundamental  principle 
that  the  next  generation  is  more  important 
than  the  present  one.  Probably  most  of  us 
hold  this  view  in  theory,  but  have  more  diffi- 
culty in  accepting  its  far-reaching  implica- 
tions in  practice.  We  dislike  a  high  income 
tax,  even  though  it  means  that  the  next  genera- 
tion may  be  freer  from  the  burden  of  war 
debt.  Why  not  let  posterity  pay?  There  are 
many  other  more  subtle  and  exacting  ways  in 
which  the  nation  and  the  individual  are 
tempted  to  ignore  the  claims  of  the  future  for 
the  sake  of  immediate  gain.  Analytical  psy- 
chology has  brought  impressive  evidence  to 
reinforce  the  criticism  of  this  policy.  Jung 
finds  the  acceptance  of  the  evolutionary  prin- 
ciple a  central  element  in  his  conception  of 
psychological  health.  .  .  .  "The  real  ground 
of  the  neurosis,"  he  writes  to  a  colleague,2  "is, 
in  many  cases,  the  inability  to  recognize  the 
work  that  is  waiting  for  them  (the  patients  in 
question)  of  helping  to  build  up  a  new  civili- 
zation. We  are  all  far  too  much  at  the  stand- 
point of  the  'nothing-but'  psychology;  we 
persist  in  thinking  that  we  can  squeeze  the 
new  future,  which  is  pressing  in  at  the  door 

1  v.  supra,  p.  75. 

2  C.  G.  Jung :  Analytical  Psychology,    p.  277. 

196 


The  Herd  Instinct  and  the  Herd  Ideal 

into  the  framework  of  the  old  and  the  known. 
And  thus  the  view  is  only  of  the  present,  never 
of  the  future.  But  it  was  of  the  most  pro- 
found psychological  significance  when  Chris- 
tianity first  discovered  in  the  orientation 
towards  the  future  a  redeeming  principle  for 
mankind.  In  the  past  nothing  can  be  altered, 
and  in  the  present  little,  but  the  future  is  ours, 
and  capable  of  raising  life's  intensity  to  its 
highest  pitch.  A  little  space  of  youth  belongs 
to  us;  all  the  rest  of  life  belongs  to  our  chil- 
dren." 

In  all  social  relationships  the  mental  mech- 
anism at  work  may  belong  to  one  of  the  two 
types  distinguished  by  "normal  social  influ- 
ences," and  "mob  hysteria."  The  former 
type  works  from  above  downward :  that  is  to 
say,  that  ideas  and  purposes  that  belong  to  the 
higher  levels  of  the  mental  life  of  the  com- 
munity gradually  percolate  down,  and  multi- 
ply and  enrich  their  content,  producing  a 
system  of  poly-ideism.  This  mechanism  can 
be  seen  at  work  in  the  slow  conquest  of  popu- 
lar thought  by  any  great  scientific  conception, 
in  the  gradual  triumph  of  a  political  or  re- 
ligious truth  that  is  at  first  held  only  by  a 
small  and  probably  despised  minority.  (It 
is  perhaps  from  some  dim  sense  of  the  work- 
ing of  this  mechanism  that  individuals  and 
197 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

groups  which  consider  themselves  above  the 
common  level  of  culture  and  morality  feel  it 
so  incumbent  upon  them  to  impose  their  ideas 
on  those  who  are  inferior  to  them.  The 
psychology  of  propaganda  is,  however,  dis- 
tinct from  that  of  normal  social  influence.  In 
the  first  place,  the  levels  of  mental  life  can 
only  be  judged  to  be  "higher"  or  "lower"  on 
the  merits  of  the  ideas  they  produce,  and  not 
by  any  preconceived  standard  of  superiority. 
And,  secondly,  the  methods  of  spreading  the 
idea  are  different :  in  the  one  case  it  is  imposed 
by  force  of  authority;  in  the  other  it  is  ac- 
cepted for  its  intrinsic  value.) 

By  the  mechanism  of  mob  hysteria  the  idea 
spreads  from  below  upwards.  It  springs  from 
the  lower  levels  of  thought  and  desire,  and  it 
tends  to  dominate  attention  completely,  and 
to  annihilate  all  other  ideas  which  might  be 
brought  into  critical  contact  with  it.  In  this 
way  it  makes  for  a  system  of  mono-ideism. 
Ideas  that  are  diffused  by  normal  social  influ- 
ences are  invariably  corrected  by  racial  and 
historical  experience;  but  mob  hysteria  works 
independently  of  these  influences.  This 
mechanism  can  be  traced  in  many  of  the  great 
and  sensational  movements  of  history.  If  we 
look,  for  example,  at  the  Crusades,  the  French 
Revolution  and  the  Russian  Revolution,  we 


The  Herd  Instinct  and  the  Herd  Ideal 

can  realize  the  way  in  which  a  single  idea 
wells  up,  gradually  obliterating  all  controlling 
and  neutralizing  ideas.  To  say  this  is  not  to 
pronounce  judgment  on  the  ultimate  value  of 
these  movements.  It  may  be  granted  for  the 
sake  of  argument  that  for  the  sake  of  the 
nation  and  of  the  world  it  was  desirable  that 
the  Russian  autocracy  that  existed  at  the  out- 
break of  the  war  should  give  place  to  a  democ- 
racy or  a  republic.  The  social  psychologist 
is  then  concerned  to  know  what  mechanism 
brought  the  change  about.  It  becomes  clear 
that  the  minds  that  were  most  competent  to 
see  the  vision  for  the  future  and  to  bring  it 
into  being  in  the  most  valuable  form  for 
society  failed  in  their  function;  and  by  their 
failure  they  made  way  for  a  second-rate 
mechanism,  whereby  a  single  controlling  idea 
swept  upward  with  devastating  effects — the 
idea  of  taking  from  the  have's  to  give  to  the 
have-nots.  This  idea,  in  its  attempt  to  pro- 
duce the  democracy  of  justice,  the  ideal  so- 
ciety, has  produced — temporarily  at  least — 
great  confusion.  The  psychologist's  criticism 
is  that  the  higher  minds  are  responsible  for 
seeing  the  vision  of  a  new  social  idea,  bal- 
ancing it  with  other  creative  ideas,  harmoniz- 
ing it  with  the  lessons  of  history,  and  allowing 
it  to  spread  by  the  process  of  normal  social 
199 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

influence ;  and  that  where  they  fail  to  do  this, 
the  opposite  process  is  bound  to  take  place, 
the  regressive  process  of  mob  hysteria, 
obsessed  by  a  single  idea,  wasting  the  lessons 
of  history,  and  wasting  much  more  that  is 
valuable  to  society  in  its  attempt  to  reach  the 
one  goal  that  it  has. 

Every  community  is  made  up  of  prophets 
and  priests:  and  the  efficiency  of  the  com- 
munity depends  very  largely  on  the  balance 
being  maintained  between  the  two  elements; 
radicals  and  tories:  modernists  and  prelates: 
visionaries  and  reactionaries.1  There  is  always 
conflict  between  them :  but  the  more  acute  it 
is  the  worse  for  the  society.  In  the  ideal  state, 
the  tradition  of  the  past,  the  heritage  of  ex- 
periment and  example  are  all  conserved  and 
reverenced  by  the  priests,  but  with  such  a  lack 
of  rigidity  and  formalism  that  they  remain 
reasonably  open  to  the  voice  of  the  prophets; 
who,  in  their  turn,  are  really  seeing  a  vision, 
and  are  able  to  transmit  it  so  that  it  can  be 
accepted  to  some  extent  even  by  the  priests. 
The  community  that  becomes  unbalanced  in 
respect  of  these  two  elements  experiences  so- 

1  This  division  corresponds  roughly  with  Trotter's 
classification  on  the  basis  of  the  "sensitive"  and  the 
"resistive"  types,  v.  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and 
War. 

200 


The  Herd  Instinct  and  the  Herd  Ideal 

cial  failure  of  one  form  or  another.  If  you 
stone  the  prophets,  you  have  Judaism;  if  you 
stone  the  priests,  you  have  Bolshevism :  a  com- 
munity disintegrated  because  it  insists  on 
remaking  every  experiment  that  history  has 
already  recorded. 

When  we  consider  the  child's  attitude  to 
social  relationships,  we  find  that  in  the  course 
of  his  development,  it  has  to  be  transformed 
in  two  ways.  He  begins  life  with  an  aim  that 
is  purely  egocentric;  his  interest  should  grad- 
ually widen  out,  until  his  aim  becomes  com- 
pletely collective.  His  judgment  has  to 
undergo  the  reverse  transformation ;  from  be- 
ing normally  collective,  the  product  of  his 
suggestibility,  it  has  to  become  completely 
individual.  One  of  the  vital  tests  of  any  sys- 
tem of  education  is  its  power  to  help  the  child 
in  both  these  aspects  of  his  adjustment  to 
authority.  The  conflict  between  progress  and 
regression  in  these  two  directions  is  a  common 
theme  in  the  dream-life  of  the  individual  who 
has  failed  to  make  this  adjustment  satisfac- 
torily. 

The  following  dream  is  an  example:  "/ 
'was  bicycling  back  to  the  big  house  from 
•which  <we  had  set  out  for  our  expedition.  I 
came  to  the  gateway,  and  was  told  to  look  out, 
but  the  coast  was  clear.  When  we  got  in,  I 
20 1 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

saw  that  there  'was  reason  for  the  warning,  for 
approaching  the  gate  from  the  inside  was  a 
small  boy  on  a  bicycle,  towing  a  full-sized 
motor  'bus  with  people  in  it.  There  was  a 
hill  just  before  the  gate,  and  when  he  stopped, 
I  expected  him  to  be  dragged  backwards  by 
the  weight  of  the  'bus;  but  he  had  it  balanced 
and  perfectly  under  control."  Earlier  inci- 
dents in  the  dream  proved  it  to  be  a  regressive 
ride.  The  dreamer  had  set  out  from  the 
ancestral  home,  but  had  veered  round  towards 
it  again,  crossing  to  the  left  bank  of  a  slow 
river,  and  finding  there  a  misshapen  infant, 
who  was  somehow  taken  along  on  the  bicycle. 
The  small  boy  was  associated  with  a  picture 
called  Vers  la  Vie,  representing  youth  and 
progress.  While  the  dreamer,  hampered  by 
the  presence  of  the  infantile  personality,  rides 
downhill  back  to  the  house,  individuality, 
towing  collective  opinion,  goes  forth  in  the 
opposite  direction. 

Wilfred  Trotter's  study  of  the  herd  instinct 1 
has  earned  the  gratitude  of  all  psychologists. 
It  is  impossible  to  deny  the  truth  of  his  obser- 
vations, which  are  extraordinarily  incisive  and 
irresistibly  stated.  The  herd  instinct  had 
been  very  largely  ignored;  although  it  seems 
to  the  writer  that  the  academic  sociologists 

1  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and  War. 
202 


The  Herd  Instinct  and  the  Herd  Ideal 

had  not  ignored  it  so  completely  in  the  past 
as  the  Freudian  School  continues  to  do  to-day, 
in  treating  it  merely  as  the  escape  of  the  sexual 
urge  in  one  direction.  As  against  this  view. 
Trotter's  statement  of  the  case  for  the  herd 
instinct  as  one  that  cannot  be  defined  in  terms 
of  any  other  instinct,  but  as  a  distinct  concep- 
tion, appears  conclusive  and  unanswerable. 
Trotter  has  shown  how  much  of  our  conduct, 
how  many  of  our  beliefs  and  opinions  are  dic- 
tated by  the  unconscious  acceptance  of  herd 
domination.  In  so  doing,  he  has  described 
very  fully  one  more  type  of  unconscious 
motive.  We  are  all  dependent  upon  the  herd, 
frightened  of  its  criticism,  afraid  of  being 
isolated  from  it,  and  afraid  of  being  ignored 
by  it.  The  herd  may  be  represented  by  a  big 
social  group  or  a  very  small  one :  but  we  are 
always  influenced  far  more  than  we  realize 
by  this  herd  dependence,  which  not  only  taints 
our  judgment,  but  also  reacts  upon  our  highest 
ethical  hopes  and  aspirations.  In  particular 
the  spontaneity,  the  creativeness,  the  origi- 
nality, and  to  some  extent  the  phantasy  of  our 
lives  is  impinging  constantly  upon  a  critical 
barrier  that  we  have  set  up  within  ourselves: 
What  will  the  herd  say  to  this? 

Our  conscious  thought  is  characteristically 
individual:  we  are  aware  of  our  personal 
203 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

identity,  and  the  ways  in  which  we  differ  from 
other  people:  but  it  needs  some  special  cir- 
cumstance to  make  us  realize  the  extent  to 
which  we  are  shaped  by  the  influence  of  the 
herd,  and  we  are  perhaps  least  aware  of  those 
characteristics  which  we  share  with  the 
greatest  number  of  our  fellows. 

The  reaction  to  herd  instinct  manifests  it- 
self in  apparently  contradictory  ways.  With 
some  it  appears  primarily  as  the  impulse  of 
the  chameleon  to  take  the  hue  of  the  company 
they  are  with.  The  undergraduate  who,  on  a 
Bohemian  reading  party,  develops  an  ultra- 
Bohemian  attitude,  is  quite  capable  of  appear- 
ing not  long  afterwards  at  a  supper  party  at 
the  Ritz,  a  perfect  slave  to  convention,  down 
to  the  smallest  detail  of  his  dress,  manner  and 
appearance.  With  some  it  is  the  fear  of  be- 
ing ignored  by  the  herd  that  is  the  predom- 
inant factor.  These  people  display  something 
of  the  rebel  psychology  described  in  an  earlier 
chapter.  They  can  dispense  with  the  approval 
of  the  herd  as  long  as  they  have  its  attention. 
They  will  go  to  business  without  a  hat  on,  or 
they  will  wear  fantastic  frocks,  or  stand  up  on 
platforms,  and  pronounce  heretical  views  all 
to  escape  the  horrible  fate  of  being  ignored. 
They  would  rather  count  as  oddities  than  pass 
unnoticed  as  mediocrities. 
204 


The  Herd  Instinct  and  the  Herd  Ideal 

The  herd  instinct  is  a  primary  instinct  of 
the  animal  type,  working  for  a  biological  end. 
We  can  study  its  manifestations  among  vari- 
ous species  of  animal  and  in  man.  We  can 
detect  it  as  the  unconscious  motive  underlying 
the  rationalization  of  human  social  behaviour. 
But  the  most  complete  examination  of  it  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  "nothing-but"  psychol- 
ogy does  not  exhaust  its  significance.  In- 
stincts work  to  an  end  that  is  a  part  of  animal 
life;  motives  are  restricted  to  the  human  race, 
and  they  work  to  an  ideal.  The  emergence 
of  this  type  of  conscious  motive,  if  it  is  recog- 
nized as  characteristic  of  human  life,  intro- 
duces a  new  factor  which  limits  the  applica- 
tion of  all  analogies  between  human  and 
animal  psychology,  though  it  does  not  detract 
from  their  value.  The  animal  instinct  which 
persists  in  man  is  operating  under  changed 
conditions,  which  demand  fresh  forms  of 
expression.  The  evidence  that  has  been  col- 
lected of  the  working  of  the  herd  instinct  in 
man  suggests  the  conclusion  that  there  are 
definite  limits  to  its  achievement,  so  long  as 
it  is  operating  mainly  in  the  unconscious,  and 
in  the  forms  most  strictly  analogous  to  those 
of  animal  life.  The  typical  human  expres- 
sion of  the  herd  instinct  is  to  be  found  not  in 
the  unreasoning  impetus  of  mob  hysteria,  nor 
205 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

in  those  slighter  and  subtler  modifications  of 
behaviour  which  reveal  our  constant  de- 
pendence on  the  herd ;  it  is  to  be  found  rather 
in  the  conscious  recognition  of  the  herd  in- 
stinct, and  the  transformation  of  it  into  the 
herd  motive  and  ideal.  The  two  forms  of 
expression  of  the  herd  instinct  are  sufficiently 
distinct  to  be  recognized  by  all  who  study 
human  behaviour:  but  the  facts  arouse  dif- 
ferent comments.  Some  are  disposed  to  em- 
phasize the  truth  that  social  idealism  is  after 
all  rooted  in  herd  instinct :  they  know  its  ante- 
cedents too  well  to  be  unduly  impressed  by  it; 
the  new  form  that  it  has  assumed  is  of  more 
than  the  gilding  of  a  biological  pill.  Others 
are  more  interested  to  observe  the  profound 
psychological  difference  between  the  process 
of  being  unconsciously  impelled  by  an  in- 
stinct, and  that  of  consciously  acting  upon  a 
motive. 

The  herd  instinct,  transformed  into  an  ideal, 
means  the  effective  recognition  by  the  indi- 
vidual that  all  his  potentialities,  spiritual, 
mental  or  physical,  are  held  in  trust  for  the 
herd.  This  identification  with  the  collective 
aim  of  society  is  the  underlying  principle  of 
sublimation:  the  direction  of  instinct  to  a 
cognate  end  that  is  socially  valuable. 

The  mechanism  of  sublimation  has  already 
206 


The  Herd  Instinct  and  the  Herd  Ideal 

been  briefly  discussed.  We  return  to  it  here 
as  being  of  supreme  importance  in  consider- 
ing the  whole  question  of  the  education  of  the 
individual  in  relation  to  the  herd.  The  mod- 
ern society  makes  heavy  demands  upon  the 
sublimating  power  of  its  members;  and  their 
happiness  and  social  efficiency  are  largely 
bound  up  with  its  successful  exercise.  In  par- 
ticular the  choice  of  occupations  needs  to  be 
considered  in  the  light  of  the  principle  of  sub- 
limation. If  we  compare  domestic  service 
with  the  work  of  a  barmaid,  it  is  obvious  that 
the  former  occupation  offers  considerable  op- 
portunity for  the  sublimation  of  the  "home- 
making"  group  of  instincts;  while  the  latter 
offers  very  little  opportunity  for  any  useful 
form  of  sublimation  at  all.  It  has  already 
been  pointed  out  that  the  work  of  a  nurse  gives 
unique  opportunities  for  sublimating  that  pure 
maternal  instinct  which  revolves  round  the 
relationship  of  helpfulness  to  the  helpless. 
This  particular  instinct  would  find  practically 
no  indirect  expression  in  the  occupations  of  a 
typist  or  a  factory  hand. 

The  right  direction  of  the  forces  of  life  is  a 
problem  of  dynamics  which  concerns  the  state 
as  much  as  the  individual.  Of  all  forms  of 
waste  perhaps  the  most  extravagant  is  that 
waste  of  vital  human  energy  which  is  begun 
207 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

by  a  repressive  and  unsuitable  form  of  educa- 
tion and  maintained  by  forcing  individuals 
into  careers  in  which  they  have  no  adequate 
opportunity  of  self-realization.  It  is  small 
wonder  that  from  the  indignant  contemplation 
of  instances  of  this  extravagance,  many  people 
should  be  led  to  the  extreme  of  affirming  the 
individual  right  to  self-expression,  even  at  the 
expense  of  the  community.  The  writer  is, 
however,  not  prepared  to  abandon  the  concep- 
tion of  sublimation  as  the  direction  of  in- 
stinctive energy  along  channels  that  are  so- 
cially useful.  The  boy  with  an  irresistible 
spirit  of  adventure  sublimates  it  more  success- 
fully by  joining  the  Navy,  than  by  becoming 
a  lion-tamer.  The  young  man  who  spends  his 
spare  time  in  being  a  scoutmaster  disposes  of 
his  whole  surplus  energy  more  successfully 
than  he  would  do  by  merely  working  off  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  it  by  playing  golf. 

The  last  example  brings  us  to  an  important 
practical  consideration:  namely,  the  oppor- 
tunities of  sublimation  provided  by  leisure. 
Many  of  the  occupations  which  under  present 
industrial  conditions  appear  to  be  necessary  to 
society  are  of  the  kind  that  offer  little  or  no 
opportunity  for  sublimation.  The  force  of 
circumstances  drives  a  certain  number  of 
people  to  occupations  for  which  they  are  quite 
208 


The  Herd  Instinct  and  the  Herd  Ideal 

unsuited.  Those  who  serve  society  on  such 
terms  as  these  are  entitled  to  adequate  oppor- 
tunity of  sublimation  and  expression  of  in- 
stinctive energy  in  their  leisure  time. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  development  of 
social  science  will  discover  the  way  to  mini- 
mize the  number  of  necessary  and  purely  me- 
chanical occupations,  and  to  enable  the  indi- 
vidual to  find  more  easily  the  form  of  work 
for  which  he  is  specially  suited.  It  has  been 
truly  pointed  out1  that  the  study  of  neurotic 
patients  from  the  standpoint  of  the  uncon- 
scious points  to  the  idea  of  special  tasks. 
"There  appears  to  be  a  particular  line  along 
which  fullest  expression  is  most  easily  expe- 
rienced in  every  individual.  Along  this  line 
the  point  of  excess  is  not  soon  reached ;  on  the 
contrary  it  would  appear  that  there  is  a  back- 
ing from  the  unconscious."  Sublimation  is 
not  achieved  solely  by  the  good  intention  of 
serving  the  herd;  it  involves  the  re-direction 
of  instinctive  energy  to  a  cognate  end,  and  it 
must  therefore  express  that  line  of  interest 
which  is  most  strongly  developed  in  the  indi- 
vidual. 

1  Dream  Psychology,  by  Maurice  Nicoll.  Oxford 
Medical  Publications,  p.  184. 


209 


CHAPTER  X 
EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 


SELF-REALIZATION  THROUGH  ACHIEVEMENT. 

THE  URGE  TO  ACHIEVEMENT:  THE  IMPULSE  OF  THE 
SENSATION-MONGER:  AND  THE  READINESS  TO  BE 
IGNORED. 

THE  IMPACT  BETWEEN  ADULT  AUTHORITY  AND  THE 
CHILD: 

Removal  of  adult  authority. 
Discipline  through  interest. 
Discipline  and  the  Forces  of  nature. 

ELEMENTS  IN  ACHIEVEMENT  : 

Conquest  and  understanding. 
The  Creative  element. 
Social  value. 
Other  criteria. 

THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  GROUP. 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

TN  previous  chapters  we  have  strayed  far 
•*•  from  the  direct  consideration  of  educa- 
tional problems,  and  have  been  largely  con- 
cerned with  the  teacher's  own  mentality. 

We  return  at  this  point  to  set  down  some 
of  the  practical  conclusions  which  seem  to  fol- 
low most  irresistibly  from  the  psychological 
evidence  that  has  been  considered. 

Of  these  conclusions,  the  most  obvious  is 
that  the  child  cannot  be  taught  self-realiza- 
tion: he  can  only  reach  that  goal  through 
achievement.  All  teaching  has  only  a  nega- 
tive value  compared  with  the  positive  value 
of  the  experience  of  achievement. 

The  urge  to  achievement  is  the  progressive 
side  of  the  striving  after  power.  The  regres- 
sive side  of  it  is  the  lure  of  attracting  attention 
and  creating  an  effect  upon  people.  The  child 
is  a  born  sensation-monger.  At  a  very  early 
age  he  seems  to  become  aware  of  his  capacities 
in  this  direction  and  begins  to  exploit  them. 
At  a  very  advanced  age,  and  with  all  the  cere- 
mony of  medical  advice  and  domestic  concern, 
213 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

he  sometimes  continues  to  gratify  a  yet  unap- 
peased  appetite  for  sensationalism. 

The  child  has  always  the  alternative  of  sat- 
isfying his  craving  for  power  in  one  or  other 
of  these  ways.  He  may  complete  his  tower 
of  bricks,  or  he  may  cause  his  nurse  to  look 
shocked  and  grieved  by  his  naughtiness.  In 
the  first  instance,  he  has  achieved  something; 
and  in  the  second,  he  has  created  a  sensation. 
Every  child  that  is  denied  adequate  and  ap- 
propriate opportunities  of  achievement  will 
find  for  itself  chances  of  sensation-mongering. 
The  particular  genius  of  the  Montessori 
method  is  to  be  found  in  the  great  range  of 
opportunity  for  achievement  with  which  it 
besets  the  path  of  the  child,  thus  relieving  it 
of  the  desire  for  creating  a  sensation.  The 
complete  triumph  over  this  desire  consists  in 
the  readiness  to  be  ignored:  and  this  quality 
Dr.  Montessori  has  evoked  in  little  children 
in  a  wonderful  way,  and  by  methods  that  are 
very  far  removed  from  those  that  are  com- 
monly associated  with  the  idea  that  "Children 
should  be  seen  and  not  heard." 

The  contribution  of  the  public  school  sys- 
tem to  the  development  of  this  quality  has  been 
the  constant  practice  of  making  it  a  preferable 
lot,  as  a  rule,  to  be  ignored  rather  than  to  be 
noticeable.  The  public  schools  have  helped 
214 


Educational  Methods 

many  boys  to  "find  their  level"  by  offering 
them  the  somewhat  crude  alternative  of  phys- 
ical discomfort  if  they  fail  to  do  so.  Up  till' 
recently,  however,  they  have  only  offered  to  a 
very  small  percentage  of  boys  opportunities  of 
real  achievement.  It  is  true  that  the  achieve- 
ment of  winning  First  Eleven  colours,  or  get- 
ting a  University  scholarship,  are  made  much 
of;  but  the  boy  has  to  pilgrimage  through 
many  years  of  dreary  obscurity  before  coming 
within  reach  of  these  golden  chances.  In  the 
past,  and  occasionally  even  in  the  present,  pub- 
lic schoolmasters  have  reiterated  with  com- 
placent pride  that  their  schools  have  the  re- 
markable and  unusual  value  of  teaching  a  boy 
not  to  think  so  much  of  himself.  This  is  per- 
fectly true,  and  in  many  cases  undoubtedly 
desirable;  but  one  may  be  permitted  to  ask 
whether  the  necessity  for  such  a  practice  does 
not  in  itself  imply  the  existence  of  a  rather 
unsatisfactory  state  of  affairs  which  is  being 
dealt  with  by  a  compromise.  The  boy  who 
from  his  earliest  years  has  been  surrounded  by 
opportunities  for  achievement,  who  has  been 
neither  crushed  nor  adored  at  home,  who  has 
never  known  what  it  is  to  have  his  interest 
dammed  back,  and  to  feel  shut  in  upon  him- 
self, to  whom  work  and  play  have  much  the 
same  value  as  possibilities  for  achievement: 
215 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

such  a  boy  rarely,  if  ever,  "needs  to  find  his 
level,"  and  be  taught  to  think  less  of  himself. 
The  arid  but  wholesome  experience  of  being 
ignored  need  not  be  associated  with  the  soul- 
destroying  process  of  being  bored,  from  which 
spring  many  of  the  most  catastrophic  outbursts 
of  naughtiness  and  undesirable  self-assertion. 

It  is  interesting  to  realize  how,  approaching 
the  same  problem  from  vastly  different  points 
of  view,  Dr.  Montessori  and  General  Baden- 
Powell  have  reached  identical  solutions, 
though  applied  in  different  spheres.  The  Boy 
Scout  and  the  Girl  Guide  Movements  intro- 
duce a  system  of  varied  possibilities  of 
achievement  into  the  life  of  the  adolescent  in 
just  the  same  way  as  the  Montessori  method 
introduces  it  into  the  life  of  the  child. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out l  that  educa- 
tion on  these  lines  does  not  sacrifice  the  train- 
ing in  attentive  control  which  is  directly  aimed 
at  by  the  method  of  enforced  attention.  The 
latter  form  of  training  is  professedly  based  on 
the  importance  of  being  able  to  apply  atten- 
tion to  any  subject  at  will.  Huxley  defined 
the  purpose  of  education  as  being  "To  enable 
us  to  do  the  things  we  ought  to  do,  when  we 
want  to  do  them,  whether  we  like  them  or 

1  v.  supra,  p.  28. 
2l6 


Educational  Methods 

not."  He  might  well  have  extended  his  defini- 
tion to  thought  as  well  as  action.  This  ideal 
is  an  essential  factor  in  all  true  education;  but 
it  is  sometimes  pursued  with  all  the  emphasis 
on  the  power  of  directing  and  controlling  at- 
tention, and  little  heed  for  the  actual  quality 
of  the  process  itself.  It  calls  up  the  picture 
of  one  of  the  great  guns,  so  perfectly  mounted 
and  adjusted  that  it  can  be  directed  with  the 
lightest  touch — a  wonderful  mechanism,  but 
useless  if  the  gun  will  not  fire.  Enforced  at- 
tention often  defeats  its  own  object  by  causing 
a  condition  of  boredom  and  frustrated  energy, 
which  is  not  only  a  waste  of  time  at  the  mo- 
ment, but  tends  to  blunt  the  faculty  of  atten- 
tion itself.  Recent  educational  experiments 
have  proved  to  how  great  an  extent  the  sys- 
tem of  enforced  attention  creates  its  own  prob- 
lem, and  how  the  force  of  spontaneous  in- 
terest, set  free  to  work  on  suitable  material, 
encounters  its  own  experience  of  discipline  as 
it  makes  its  way  along  the  road  to  achievement. 
There  could  be  no  more  telling  criticism  of 
educational  conceptions  in  the  past  than  the 
fact  of  our  deep-seated  conviction  that  life 
will  express  itself  as  lawlessness;  that  if  we  do 
not  exercise  a  rigid  control  over  the  mental 
activities  of  the  child,  they  will  waste  them- 
selves in  futility;  that  if  we  do  not  create 
217 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

order  for  the  child  he  will  make  chaos  for 
himself.  Those  who  hold  the  opposite  view 
have  had  to  resist  a  great  pressure  of  common 
opinion.  Mr.  Chesterton  has  seized  the  ele- 
ment of  paradox  in  this  situation,  and  has 
devoted  some  of  his  most  persuasive  wit1  to 
proving  that  it  is  the  free  and  living  society 
that  creates  for  itself  the  discipline  of  new 
institutions;  and  that  it  is  only  when  life  ebbs 
away  from  them  that  there  arises  anarchy  and 
death.  Monsieur  Bergson,  by  an  extraor- 
dinary effort  of  philosophic  detachment,  has 
stepped  outside  the  charmed  circle  of  scholas- 
ticism, and  from  this  new  standpoint  watched 
the  creative  movement  of  life  itself.  The  new 
psychology  has  taken  us  back  towards  the  con- 
ception of  happiness  as  "unimpeded  energy," 
and  has  shown  that  our  belief  in  enforced  con- 
trol is  largely  the  projection  of  the  distrust  of 
our  own  unconscious  energies.  Each  in  his 
own  tongue,  many  a  witness  has  testified  to  the 
necessity  for  making  our  thought  about  human 
affairs  dynamic  and  not  static,  vital  and  not 
mechanical,  in  its  categories.  It  is  not  easy  to 
keep  pace  with  thought  on  these  terms,  and  to 
respond  to  this  challenge.  Least  of  all  is  it 
easy  to  accept  its  implications  in  education. 

1  Notably  in  Orthodoxy  and  Manalive. 
2l8 


Educational  Methods 

It  makes  a  great  demand  upon  energy — a  de- 
mand which  can  hardly  be  met  by  those  whose 
own  vital  forces  are  largely  repressed.  Small 
wonder  if  some  prefer  that  the  children  they 
teach  should  exhibit  an  orderly  torpor  or  a 
mechanical  regularity  rather  than  any  un- 
looked-for or  misdirected  outburst  of  energy. 
The  most  superficial  observation  of  experi- 
ments in  auto-education  should  be  enough  to 
convince  one  that  they  do  not  conduce  to  a 
mere  policy  of  laissez  faire  on  the  part  of  the 
teacher;  but,  on  the  contrary,  make  new  and 
exacting  demands  upon  him. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  the  unnecessary 
impact  between  adult  authority  and  the  child 
about  which  we  have  much  to  learn.  Our 
schools  are  all  devised  to  carry  out  the  wishes 
of  the  head  master  and  others.  The  George 
Junior  Republic  in  America  and  the  now  de- 
funct Little  Commonwealth,  instituted  by  Mr. 
Homer  Lane,  in  England,  represent  an  at- 
tempted solution  of  this  problem.  It  is  said 
that  in  Russia,  since  the  establishment  of  the 
Soviet  Government,  children  were  empowered 
to  select  their  own  subjects  of  study,  elect  their 
teachers,  and  determine  the  length  of  their 
holidays.  This  state  of  affairs  may  only  be  a 
malevolent  invention  of  the  Morning  Post, 
or  an  unwarranted  boast  of  the  Daily  Herald; 
219 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

but  if  the  information  is  accurate,  it  is  a  phe- 
nomenon worthy  of  notice.  At  various  board- 
ing-schools, notably  at  Oundle  under  Mr.  San- 
derson, at  Clayesmore  under  Mr.  Devine,  and 
at  St.  George's  School,  Harpenden,  under  Mr. 
Grant,  experiments  in  auto-education  have 
been  carried  to  notable  lengths.  The  former 
group  mentioned  represents  the  attempt  to 
stimulate  character  growth  by  the  removal 
of  adult  authority:  the  latter  depends  more  on 
the  attempt  to  provide  interest  which  shall 
open  the  doors  of  achievement  to  boys  at  all 
stages  of  their  school  career.  Obviously  the 
second  plan  is  psychologically  sounder  than 
the  first;  for  the  mere  removal  of  discipline 
may  have  a  negative  effect  unless  it  is  asso- 
ciated with  a  really  infectious  spirit  of 
achievement,  which  automatically  brings  in  its 
train  a  reconciliation  to  self-mastery. 

The  problem  of  the  collision  between  adult 
authority  and  the  adolescent  has  been  success- 
fully evaded  in  certain  directions  by  the  pre- 
fect system.  There  is  another  way  in  which  it 
may  be  partly  obviated.  Too  much  care  is 
sometimes  taken  to  protect  the  child  of  civil- 
ization from  the  conditions  which  he  must 
sooner  or  later  learn  to  face  on  his  own  respon- 
sibility. The  modern  schoolmaster  is  not 
ashamed  to  put  up  a  notice :  "All  boys  watch- 
220 


Educational  Methods 

ing  the  football  match  must  wear  overcoats" 
and  to  enforce  this  regulation  with  punish- 
ment. The  writer  is  not  disposed  to  doubt  that 
some  boys  and  girls  do  need  some  outward 
assistance  to  draw  their  attention  to  matters 
such  as  this;  but  he  would  far  rather  that  the 
notice  should  penalize  all  those  boys  who  had 
watched  the  football  match  and  had  colds 
next  day.  Why  punish  a  boy  for  not  wearing 
an  overcoat  when  he  may  be  constitutionally 
able  to  do  without  it?  And  why  suggest  that 
the  amount  of  clothing  to  be  worn  under  any 
given  meteorological  conditions  is  a  matter  on 
which  he  has  no  more  right  to  discretion  than 
on  the  choice  of  school  colours? 

There  is  no  training  that  can  compare  in 
this  way  with  sea  training.  Life  at  sea  is  the 
clearest  statement  of  the  demand  for  disci- 
pline, not  from  an  external  authority,  but  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  situation.  There  the 
boy  has  to  realize  that  he  has  to  ensure,  not 
only  his  own  safety,  but  the  safety  of  his  craft 
and  his  crew,  by  taking  thought  so  that  he  may 
not  be  caught  unawares  by  the  forces  of  Na- 
ture. If  he  ignores  the  threatening  squall,  or 
thinks  to  increase  his  comfort  by  making  fast 
his  main  sheet;  if  he  forgets  his  compass  or 
can't  be  bothered  with  sounding,  the  reckon- 
221 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

ing  has  to  be  made  not  with  adult  authority, 
from  which  he  hopes  one  day  to  be  eman- 
cipated, but  with  Nature  and  her  forces,  whose 
terms  he  must  always  accept.  The  most  ele- 
mentary experience  of  boating  is  enough  to 
teach  the  boy  or  girl  the  fundamental  basis  of 
discipline:  the  impossibility  of  safeguarding 
the  crew  when  one  member  cannot  be  relied 
upon  to  obey  promptly. 

Furthermore,  there  are  few  forms  of  achieve- 
ment more  valuable  than  the  achievement  over 
natural  forces.  The  boy  who  has  won  a  box- 
ing contest  has  undoubtedly  achieved  some- 
thing; but  the  boy  who  has  climbed  a  lofty 
and  difficult  mountain-peak  has  achieved 
something  still  more  valuable  from  the  point 
of  view  of  character-formation.  Direct  con- 
tact with  the  forces  of  Nature  invariably  in- 
troduces into  achievement  the  two  aspects  of 
conquest  and  understanding.  The  mental 
quality  which  is  expressed  at  its  highest  in  the 
respect  for  personality  is  being  trained  by 
every  necessity  for  understanding  the  way 
things  work:  from  humouring  the  refractory 
engine  to  studying  the  conditions  of  growth 
for  the  plant  or  animal. 

The  department  of  achievement  that  with 
many  boys  and  most  girls  counts  for  most  is 
the  creative;  and  here  again  the  sense  of 

222 


Educational  Methods 

achievement  is  a  mingling  of  conquest  and  un- 
derstanding. Different  temperaments  will 
find  a  different  degree  of  satisfaction  in  these 
two  elements.  Both  are  described  by  Berg- 
son  in  an  illuminating  passage  l :  "A  note- 
worthy fact  is  the  extraordinary  disproportion 
between  the  consequences  of  an  invention  and 
the  invention  itself.  .  .  .  Fabricating  consists 
in  shaping  matter,  in  making  it  supple  and 
bending  it,  in  converting  it  into  an  instrument 
in  order  to  become  master  of  it.  It  is  this 
mastery  that  profits  humanity,  much  more  even 
than  the  material  result  of  the  invention  itself. 
Though  we  derive  an  immediate  advantage 
from  the  thing  made,  as  an  intelligent  animal 
might  do,  and  though  this  advantage  be  all 
that  the  inventor  sought,  it  is  a  slight  matter 
compared  with  the  new  ideas  and  the  new 
feelings  that  the  invention  may  give  rise  to 
in  every  direction,  as  if  the  essential  part  of 
the  effect  were  to  raise  us  above  ourselves,  and 
enlarge  our  horizon."  The  last  sentence  is  a 
convincing  statement  of  the  case  for  giving 
adequate  opportunities  of  creative  achieve- 
ment to  the  child  at  every  stage  of  his  develop- 
ment. 

1  Creative  Evolution,  by  Henri  Bergson.  Authorized 
translation,  by  Arthur  Mitchell,  Ph.D.  Macmillan  & 
Co.,  1920.  p.  192  f. 

223 


The  New  Psychology  and  the  Teacher 

The  expression  of  the  creative  impulse  is 
one  of  the  criteria  of  value  which  we  would 
apply  to  the  child's  achievements;  but  it  is 
not  the  only  one.  Fretwork  might  satisfy  this 
test  to  some  extent,  and  provide  also  training 
in  skill  and  co-ordination;  but  the  demand  for 
fretwork  articles,  even  in  the  most  apprecia- 
tive family,  is  so  limited  that  it  is  an  unsatis- 
factory form  of  creation  to  practise.  The 
criterion  of  social  value  has  to  be  applied,  in 
no  narrowly  utilitarian  sense,  to  the  child's 
forms  of  self-expression.  It  is  obviously  de- 
sirable that  emotional  energy  should  be  sub- 
limated along  this  line  as  far  as  possible.  It 
is  an  interesting  experiment  to  classify  the 
various  forms  of  achievement  offered  to  the 
child  according  to  their  value,  in  giving  op- 
portunity for  the  expression  of  rhythm,  self- 
expression,  social  value,  skill  and  co-ordina- 
tion, endurance  and  understanding;  choosing, 
for  example,  such  occupations  as  Dalcroze 
eurhythmies,  folk-dancing,  chip-carving,  sew- 
ing, ambulance,  sea-training,  riding,  cross- 
country running,  and  cricket. 

In  laying  stress  on  the  development  of  the 
individual  psyche  and  the  child's  right  to  ad- 
vance at  his  own  pace  and  in  his  own  way,  it 
often  appears  that  great  practical  difficulties 
must  be  placed  in  the  way  of  education.  There 
224 


Educational  Methods 

is  also  the  danger  of  exaggerating  the  impor- 
tance of  individual  achievement  at  the  expense 
of  developing  loyalty  and  co-operation.  The 
balance  between  these  two  has  been  wonder- 
fully attained  in  certain  scholastic  experi- 
ments, notably  those  at  Oundle,  where  team 
work  plays  a  very  important  part.  The  pos- 
sibility of  individual  achievement  is  indeed 
very  closely  bound  up  with  the  principle  of 
group  work ;  for  it  is  often  only  by  the  division 
of  labour  that  an  end  can  be  accomplished 
which  satisfies  the  child's  sense  of  achieve- 
ment, without  overtaxing  his  powers. 

The  points  which  have  been  touched  upon 
in  this  chapter  in  connexion  with  the  element 
of  achievement  in  education  illustrate  one 
aspect  of  education  on  which  it  seems  to  the 
writer  that  the  student  of  the  new  psychology 
will  have  gathered  convictions.  There  are 
other  aspects,  and  perhaps  more  important 
ones,  on  which  nothing  has  been  said ;  but  they 
lie  outside  the  scope  of  this  book,  whose  pur- 
pose it  was  to  help  the  teacher  to  gain  some- 
thing of  the  analytical  point  of  view;  and 
having  done  that,  to  draw  his  own  conclu- 
sions. 


225 


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